The good, the bad, and you know the rest

I'll start with the BAD, go to the UGLY, then conclude with the GOOD:

• BAD:  I had a U-14 P1 Girls' game.  2nd minute into the game, Yellow coach complains I missed a handling inside the penalty area.  I had a decent angle, saw nothing.  No signal from my A/R (opposite site - alleged handling was in my quadrant).  More importantly, no one from the Yellow team screamed "hand ball sir!" (yes, we usually get plenty of 'help' from the players on the field with those calls).  So all I said to the coach is "didn't see it sir".  HE JUST WOULDN'T let it go.  10 min later I do call a handling and he says "well at least *they* got their handling."  I also had one crazy 5 min stretch in the 2nd half where there were many almost fouls, but I didn't call any.  Also had one mysterious downed girl that I didn't see the cause because I did not remember my previous lesson - take an extra second looking behind the play before moving on.

OK so my two lessons here:  Ask, Tell, Remove!  Also, don't forget to call fouls - even if they are trifling - to keep the temperature down.  So at the end the coach felt like we conspired against his team.  I was done with him at that point, but I did not REMOVE him (I should have).  The sad thing is I worked with 2 Grade 8 HS refs who both have potential to really progress as refs.  They both thought I did a great job, and both thought the coach was an *sshole.  So congrats coach.  Not only are you ignorant, but your actions cause other young refs to think "why bother."  If we see each other again and you start, you won't finish.

All wet

You have to live along the Colorado Front Range to understand that weather that is 'routine' along the East Coast (namely, steady rain) or in Cascadia doesn't happen too often here.  Well Mother Nature conspired to do just that, give us a light to moderate rain right after my Fr/Soph HS game started this past Wednesday.  Multiple weird things happened.

• It started raining 5 min after we started the game.  Rapidly became moderate in nature, then alternated between light and moderate.  Of course, I had my trusty garbage bag (we all do, right?) INSIDE my gear bag.  Lots of good that did.  Managed to get a chance to get it OVER my gear bag during a break after a goal.

Initial Chill of Autumn

Well after the hottest August in Denver history (I love how the weather folks make that sound.  Um, weather 'history' goes back to the late 1800s and if you consider the relocation of the official station, it's even less than that, but anyway...), we finally had some good soccer weather this past weekend.  So onto the good stuff.

• As warned, only had two Prez Cup games.  Ran CR on a U-13 Boys game.  Had one situation where there was going to be a footrace for a through ball, so the Yellow Defender made a strong shoulder challenge (before the ball) on the Blue Attacker and knocked the attacker down (although not maliciously).  Long whistle from me.  Yellow Defender kept going - no argument from him.  Thought about a booking for a 'tactical' challenge, but score was already 2-0 in favor of Blue, game temperature was comfortable, and didn't think the game needed the card.  So I kept it in my pocket.  No arguments from anyone, and my ARs thought I made the correct move.  U-14 and up I would have definitely issued the card.  There's no definition in the Laws for a 'tactical' challenge - we just use it for game management.  Am I doing the game disservice by not issuing the card to a U-13 player?