i suppose the benefit is that it's a very safe environment for learning, mistakes can be made and they wont really be jumped on by players / managers etc, unlike in senior football
U12 academy match
- Thread starter Rob123
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i suppose the benefit is that it's a very safe environment for learning, mistakes can be made and they wont really be jumped on by players / managers etc, unlike in senior football
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The US soccer structure is very different from what you have in the UK.
Our largest youth program (particularly in western half of the country) is AYSO--with entirely volunteer coaches and referees. And AYSO has separate authority from USSF to train and certify referees. (There is a cross-over provision that allows a transfer from one to the other.)
Collecting volunteer refs is different from having people decide they want to do it for pay. Essentially, parents and older siblings get "volun-told" to be referees when teams are told they can't have uniforms until they get two ref volunteers. With that pool of volunteers, the three person system gets used even in 10U. While three refs are absolutely not needed in 10U, it is about as easy as an intro one can get to being a referee (well, except for the parents . . .). Being in the middle is even less scary with two ARs in support. And that makes doing the higher levels less scary, as it is a small jump up rather than starting at a higher level.
This creates a couple of dynamics. One is that parents paying a lot more to have their kid play club expect that if AYSO has three refs, they should have three refs. (Though I think that doesn't often happen at 10U.) But it also means that there are a lot of people with some volunteer ref experience--and many move on to ref for the club system or scholastic system. In other words, just as AYSO is the starting point for many soccer careers, it is the starting point for many soccer referee paths. (And unlike many rec leagues, AYSO does not permit the two-whistle system, so its refs are trained on proper three person mechanics.)
Our largest youth program (particularly in western half of the country) is AYSO--with entirely volunteer coaches and referees. And AYSO has separate authority from USSF to train and certify referees. (There is a cross-over provision that allows a transfer from one to the other.)
Collecting volunteer refs is different from having people decide they want to do it for pay. Essentially, parents and older siblings get "volun-told" to be referees when teams are told they can't have uniforms until they get two ref volunteers. With that pool of volunteers, the three person system gets used even in 10U. While three refs are absolutely not needed in 10U, it is about as easy as an intro one can get to being a referee (well, except for the parents . . .). Being in the middle is even less scary with two ARs in support. And that makes doing the higher levels less scary, as it is a small jump up rather than starting at a higher level.
This creates a couple of dynamics. One is that parents paying a lot more to have their kid play club expect that if AYSO has three refs, they should have three refs. (Though I think that doesn't often happen at 10U.) But it also means that there are a lot of people with some volunteer ref experience--and many move on to ref for the club system or scholastic system. In other words, just as AYSO is the starting point for many soccer careers, it is the starting point for many soccer referee paths. (And unlike many rec leagues, AYSO does not permit the two-whistle system, so its refs are trained on proper three person mechanics.)
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This isn't just drafting parents to be club lines, it is training the volunteers to be referees. All the refs on the game are volunteers, not just the ARs. And they are all trained and qualified as refs. (Well, AYSO actually does have a class that can be taught only to certify volunteers as ARs not refs, but it is hardly ever taught.) The expectation is that any one of the volunteer refs is qualified to be and can be the R. Different Regions do it differently--in many places the three officials meet in the pregame and decide who will be the ref and who will AR. In other places the three positions are assigned.
While some places have the volunteers on their own kids game in 10U, the usual expectation--even at 10U--is that there are three neutral volunteer referees at every AYSO game. (And AYSO provides the uniforms to the referees.)
(While some might wonder about quality, most of the comments I have heard where I am is that families that do both think that the AYSO referees tend to be better than what they get on club games.)