- 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?
- Had two HS JV games. First one went so smoothly (maybe a handful of total fouls, only had to admonish a player once for nonsense after the play) that I thought "well maybe HS is different from my normal U-15/U-16 boys games." Um no. Today's JV game my partner and I issued 3 yellow cards, had plenty of fouls, and were close to issuing a red (two yellows to same player actually). In today's game I worked with probably the youngest HS ref we have (early 20s) - bottom line, we could both run and keep up with the flow of the game. Some HS refs - well I'm glad they're out there and are an inspiration, but they really can't run anymore, so there's no way they can keep up with offside calls.
Until next time...
My thought on cautioning U-13 players, and I am assuming President's Cup teams are the pay decent money for play clubs that produce a high fraction of the Colorado ODP players...
ReplyDeleteAt 12/13, boys are not strong enough to really hurt another player without a big run up. By the time they are 15, they can hurt someone by running them into the ground/hip checking/high tripping them instead of running them off the ball with a clean, legal and hard shoulder challenge.
Getting the higher end players conditioned and aware of the heavy sanctions of a tactical foul/foul that could injure at an age where they can't injure probably does the game more good than harm. So with that logic, I have been giving more cautions to U-12/U-13/U-14 players than I had in the past in order to (hopefully) produce better U-16/U-18 players in the future.
All of this is always conditional on game flow, temperature, and skill level, but that thought process is entering my mind now when I see an either/or foul where I could go simple foul, or I could go yellow without any real complaints, so it weighs slightly more yellow now instead of simple foul.
And if the game is a very low level Sunday travel/in-house game where there might be 1 useful left foot on the entire field, I'm not pulling the card as the kids won't understand what behaviors I am trying to get them to modify.