Question Number: 15694

Other 6/3/2007

RE: Professional

Jon of London, UK asks...

This question is a follow up to question 15667

Anyone care to explain to this pretty experienced referee why American High School football have different laws???!! Is this not highly detrementaly to a) the game, b) the upbring of players to make it to a high standard and c) the officials knowledge and application of the laws??? Seems to me a crazy system. Did someone sit there one day and day: "Hey i don't like these rules that have been in place for over a hundred years, I'm going to change them" ?

Answer provided by Referee Keith Contarino

Hi Jon. I'm with you. I do not even like to WATCH American High School soccer especially if there;s the deplorable 2-man referee system in place. I'm sure you've run into the American attitude of "we can do better" but this is one instance where it's far, far worse. Kind of like what Europe has done to the American game of basketball with the crazy widening of the foul lane. High School soccer rule changes make no sense and why anyone would even try to change a sport you guys created and is played everywhere else in the world by the same rules is beyond me.

Answer provided by Referee Gary Voshol

They do it because they can. The cynics among us would say they do it to justify their existence. High School sports are governed by state-level administrations. These administrators typically have backgrounds in the "bigger" US sports - baseball, basketball and pointy-ball-football. They don't understand the culture in soccer-football. Sporting conduct isn't an inherent part of the game, it is something that must be forced on players who otherwise would act as barbarians. (Oh wait a minute. I've done U15 club games, they sometimes are barbarians.) But the HS administrators don't think they can trust the players to do the right thing. So instead of having a dropped ball and allowing the players to make a decision as to which team should get possession of the ball after a stoppage, they define possession by giving an indirect kick. HS is also usually a year or two behind in adopting changes into their rules that are made to the Laws of the Game.

Yes, it does cause some confusion from time to time. Good refs adapt - it's just another set of rule modifications to remember, with a few more changes than commonly occur in youth games. If you review a short list of modifications before you start each and every youth or HS game you do, you should get the modifications back into your head and deal with them appropriately. Doesn't always happen, but then sometimes the best of the best referees make mistakes in Law in the highest-profile games on TV too.

Most of the HS modifications deal with misconduct and referee mechanics, not with how the game is played. I agree with Ref Contarino that the 2-ref 2-whistle system is abysmal. I've never worked HS games, but I've done enough USSF-affiliated youth games where only one AR shows up that I know good positioning when only using 2 refs is difficult to impossible.

And remember those administrators that don't understand the game? They also couldn't understand that players were being dismissed from games and shown red cards. Pointy-ball players don't get sent off for committing horrendous fouls, they just give the other team 15 yards of field position. All those soccer players are being sent off, there must be something wrong with the game, we've got to crack down. So they make draconian rules about not allowing teams to advance in state championships if they have "too many" cards - sometimes as few as 4 over a 20 game season.

OK, rant over. Back to our regular programming.