Recruiting

[Player989random]

As a young (I kill the median in every group I'm in) ref in 3 sports, I notice the same problem in each group I'm with. Answering the recruiting, go to an intramural program. Believe you me, when I heard $65 as the starting game fee I gave up dealing with frat-fights every Sunday-Thursday for $9/hour. Your bigger issue is retention. Even in IM's we had about a 16% return rate. Most kids left because they couldn't handle being shouted at for 3 hours a night. Now imagine those guys in a gym on Friday night.

Yet even if you find the guys who don't care about Billy the angry dad, you get the guys who are tired of the politics and lack of mobility. I'm not reffing girl's MS for 4 years to "pay my dues" when it's clear as day that the Varsity guys can't even walk up and down a court. Hearing crap like we were "great officials but too young to work Varsity" while a board member's nephew worked a playoff game in his 2nd year didn't help."Trust the process" they said. **** the process.

As for the belief that "we don't want to hear" that we aren't ready, nah man, we're just tired of the corruption. You'll never be ready for even a bad Varsity game if you spend all your time reffing 5-step travels and double dribbles. And I've never met a good ref who thought he was Varsity ready after his first year.

My advice is that when you go to recruit these kids, you be honest. You won't work Varsity for a while, and even then not a quality one, because of office politics. Once they hear that, most will stay because they're curious, or want the cash. Lord knows it's why I do soccer.