Saturday, May 24, 2014

Today's Match Report

Like in other tournaments and online, making sure the match report is filled out and delivered to the proper authorities is number one.

Like number one.

As in, if you break a leg, before you call the ambulance, make sure you drop off your match report number one (OK not really but you get the idea).

So while I want to conk out into a coma before starting again tomorrow, here is a brief summary of today's antics events.

While some start at 8 AM, I was fortunate to have my first game at 9:45AM, allowing me to have a leisurely breakfast with my referee crew - and as a result a bit of an extended pregame.  My crew consisted of 2 very nice, professional and skilled referees from the Eastern Pennsylvania and Eastern New York state associations.  One of my favorite things about these tournaments is the opportunity to meet new people and hear about the little things leagues do in various places.  But we couldn't chat forever as we had a tough (or so we anticipated) 3 game set of U16 games to take care of.

The first game was also important since it was my center and I was being assessed by John Paine, a former FIFA referee and current USSF National Assessor.  It was great to have him give me constructive criticism on a match, as he pointed out some of my habits and techniques that needed to be worked upon.  The match unfortunately wasn't very difficult.  To quote Mr. Paine "Easy Game.... and you kept it easy!"  So while I performed well, I wasn't particularly challenged.  Perhaps tomorrow will be different!

After that, I was the Assistant Referee for my 2 partners, and we all had relatively easy games.  Our hopes are that the performances we put in will put us in consideration for some semifinals and finals in the upcoming couple of days!

At the end of the game, the local state referee association catered a lovely BBQ dinner where refs from the different associations were able to mingle and trade war stories.  I heard something about a 3 straight red card slugfest, easy blowouts, and a world-class bicycle kick from a U12 player.

So all in a day's work :-).

Catch you tomorrow!  I'm going to track down some of the Mass referees during my break tomorrow and see if I can take some good photos.  Make sure to follow the #MassRegionalRefs and #MassTourneyRefs hashtags on instagram and twitter!


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