Maria’s soccer team ended up with second place for their division (Trenton/Oxford/Monroe) and will get a chance to play in the State tournament as the 2nd seed from our division.
Had 3 games this weekend, smoke the first team 8-1 on Saturday. Played to a tie 0-0- in their first game Sunday but won in double overtime with penalty kicks, then lost to the 1st place team in a hard fought 1-0 game.
It’s all good for the girls, not so much for the coaches and refs.
Our girls are blessed to have a great coach. Allegedly his brother plays soccer professionally (or semi-professionally). He commands practice, gets a lot of out of the girls and is always positive. (Often overly positive if you ask me, but that’s beside the point).
The girls play hard for him and that’s good.
What’s not good is the undercurrent within the local SAY Soccer board, to keep him from coaching. Apparently he’s hard on the refs, we’ve heard that from a number of sources. The coaches at this level aren’t supposed to directly interact with the refs. They are often kids who in a lot of cases shouldn’t be reffing a game. In a lot of cases the coach has been right, the reffing has been poor, very poor.
The problem though is that apparently our coach picked on the wrong ref. The son of the head of refs and board president (who calls a pretty poor game to top it off) a couple of weeks ago. In fact our coach didn’t complain, one of the parents did. The boy was doing a horrible job.
The coach and the president are now engaged in what could only be considered a pissing contest among men. Being a man, I understand this completely. But it’s not doing the girls any good.
The coach while he may be hard on the refs (especially the bad ones). Has the support of all the parents. We recognize a good coach when we see one and they are few and far between.
To make matters worse, in the Second game Saturday, the head ref (who’s the other half of the pissing contest) reffed the girls game. Less than 1/2 way through the 2nd period he tossed our coach, which kept him of coaching the 2nd game too.
Did he deserve to be tossed? I don’t know, there are two sides to every story. If he was warned three times then yeah, he deserved it. But what’s worse (in my mind) is that the ref should not have reffed that game to begin with. Given the current pissing contest, acting as head ref in this tournament game was a conflict of interest and should have been avoided. I have not problem with him ‘auditing or observing’ but he should not have been reffing.
He was there just to push the coaches buttons, and push them he did.
Now the question is if the coach is able to coach in the state tournament?
We’ll find out Tuesday night at the board meeting. There’s movement afoot to not reelect the current board members. But we’ll see if that comes to fruition. That vote is supposed to be Tuesday night.
I’ve coached kids, and it’s not easy. It’s especially difficult with the games are not called or judged fairly. I’ve reffed too (though not in soccer) and that’s equally difficult when the parents and coaches are abusive.
Regardless it’s too much drama for 8-10 year old soccer. This is a learning league. No scholarships rely on these games. They should however be judged fairly and constantly and they have not been overall.
_self