Parent Bonding Through Incompetence

It was bright and early on a San Rafael soccer field that we gathered for Game 2 of the U12 soccer playoffs. As you can imagine, tension was in the air as the stakes were high. One of these teams could possibly advance to the level of receiving a trophy or medal that would soon become lost in players' rooms or used as a hat rack. Stakes were high.

By U12, parents are pretty tuned in with the rules of the game. Many of us have already brought up older sibblings through the ranks of soccer, so we've all taken our turn at being a line judge for a game. Unfortunately, the referee we had running the field for the game did not know the rules of the game...at all.

It's not pretty to see a referee lose control of a game, but that's what happened yesterday. The 20-something guy just stood there on the field as mayhem errupted around him. Players yelled at him. Parents yelled at him. Even his own line judges stared at him with disdain. His complete incompetence actually led to something kind of cool, though. Parents from both teams came together and started yelling calls into the ref...even if those calls were against their own childrens' team.

A group of 10-15 parents would scream "Offsides" and the ref would eventually blow his whistle with the realization that maybe, possibly, something whistle-worthy had happened on the field. The parents would make the call and eventually the ref would catch up.

Before we get too critical of the ref, keep in mind that this is a $15/game employee we have here. Burgermeister turned down his application and, thankfully, the San Rafael Youth Soccer Association called with a back-up plan. You can bet at halftime he was texting his friend, "Dude, Parents Up Tite 2Day." And yes, I'm sure that's exactly how he spelled it.

We're lucky in Novato that we have some older dudes that ref because they love it. They really know the rules and they take command of the field. It seems to me that they do it for the game and not the money. I guess that's why we get a little spun up when we go to another city and find a ref that's sort of just phoning it in. I mean, doesn't he get it? This is the U12 playoffs that could possibly lead to the U12 championship that could possibly lead to a trophy that will support a hat until the little soccer player's diecast plast-faux-metalic arm is accidentally broken off about three weeks in the future.

So what is offsides? Oh, come on. This is just a blog that no one knows you are reading. You can admit here that you don't really know what offsides is. It's okay. It only took me about four years on the town's soccer board to understand offsides. Here's a simple explanation you can take to your next youth soccer game. If an offensive player (by offensive, I mean going for the goal, not a player that refuses to bathe) runs behind the defense, he is in an offsides position. Wait, don't blow the whistle yet. Don't scream at the ref yet. Offsides only gets called if the ball is passed to the player in the offsides position or if that player interferes with the goalie in some way. So, a player can be offsides, but the ref will wait to call offsides until the player becomes involved in the play. See, wasn't that easy? Now you can scream your heart out at the next soccer game when you are confronted with the injustice of a missed offsides call.

So, yesterday's lesson was that when a group of adults is confronted with sheer incompetence, they will somehow band together to fill the void. Hopefully, the same is true in other situations, such as nuclear power plant management or microbrewing.