A good start

My first game (on Friday) was with a CR who was Grade 7 and claimed he is qualified to be Grade 6 (state level) and an AR who is a local HS coach.  In other words, a ton of experience for a U-12 Girls "Gold" game.  This CR emphasized eye contact with the AR.  He also emphasized "slow calls" from his AR.  If he has the call on a throw-in, he will signal to you that he has the call, don't raise the flag.  I found that...different.  I got used to it though and at the end I learned a few tips from him.  So all was good, and I hope to get the chance to work with this guy again on a higher level game.  The game was one-sided, but ended 0-0 because the clearly more talented team was launching long shots that were all easily saved by the GK.   Went home still fighting my cold.

Saturday morning.  As I said I would, I got up early to go watch a Boys U-14 Silver game.  I was nervous - what would they be doing.  After about 20 min watching one of the games, my reaction is "I got this."  It was a lot cleaner than I anticipated, so I left for the morning feeling super confident.  I knew my aerobics would be an issue, but otherwise I was good to go.

So I show up in the afternoon for my 1p start.  I meet the AR, who is Grade 9.  There are some Grade 9 refs (generally between 12 and 14) that are enthusiastic and pepper you with a ton of questions.  This one, well, he's an example of not what to do as a Grade 9.  Fortunately, my other AR was a strong Grade 8 HS kid.  I had him run the "senior" position which is the player/coach sideline.  This kid if he chooses to stick with reffing will become a Grade 6 as he gets older, and could go farther if he wants.  As a CR, I cannot tell you how much easier it is when you have good ARs.

My U-14 boys game went without incident.  The Grade 8 AR was on top of everything and made my life easy.  Well easy enough so I could go cover my Grade 9 AR who I don't think even knew all the correct signals.  The sad thing is both my ARs got the same pay.  The only odd thing that happened is I stopped the game because one of the boys was carrying something in his hand during the game.  It looked like a whistle!  It turned out to be some black tape that was on the field.  Um, dude, put it in your pocket, or on your head.  Problem solved.  This same dude had some nifty footwork, but was adding some audio effects to his footwork.  The Grade 8 AR and I both agreed he was on the verge of being cautioned, so I mentioned it to his coach.  Problem solved.

Good start.  My conditioning was off as I expected, but I found the flow of the game.  Whew.  Onto the easy stuff...right?