Now THAT'S Pressure

So I spent part of the day yesterday at the New England Over The Hill Soccer League championships in Lexington MA.

It was a spectacular day for soccer and the atmosphere showed it. There were people everywhere as the whole park was full, and you could hear goal scoring celebrations erupt at various times all afternoon.

In addition to the soccer, there was a very interesting exercise going on with some of the registered assessors. For many of them (myself included) it was a time to meet some of the requirements of the badge, and assess a match ... the same match.

Now this will provide an excellent measurement opportunity for the Mass Ref staff as it will provide a side by side analysis of the very same match. It also gives the Mass Ref staff and excellent opportunity for mentoring its assessors ... as it was designed.

Speaking as an assessor, this is a tremendous opportunity to be able to get some feedback on how I'm doing and how another saw the match. If we go really crazy, we can take the scores, and do a full analysis like mean, median, and standard deviation. This will actually paint a nice picture of just how "differently" we see The Game.

Even beyond that, and in reference to the title, it can be hard enough on a referee knowing there is an assessor out there, never mind a small army of them.

It was actually a funny sight, assessors lining and circling the field like we were in an Official Sports aquarium. You had to see it.

I personally give the referee great credit as it was clear, he saw us circling around during the match and responded well to it.

It is something to consider as an assessor in how a referee is going to react to different stresses we provide them, intentionally or not. Also, for referees, that flows downhill to players. What stress do referees put on players, intentionally or not.

Is there something we can, or should do to lower these tensions?