Ref Base – Mentor Evaluations

Good general understanding of the referee's diagonal. We discussed positioning after the match in terms of proximity and angle. In general, try to be about 10 to 20 yards away from play. If you are further than that, sprint to make up the difference. Work to find angles looking through the players to adequately see play. There were several instances during the game when play was in the referee's quadrant, and your position was towards the AR. This created a situation where you and the AR had the same general view of play. In these instances, swing wider on your diagonal and take a position so play is to your right.

As you advance and get more comfortable with being in the center, the game will slow down in your mind. This will help you better interpret what you are seeing and allow you to work more on other aspects, such as foul recognition.

You looked regularly to your ARs. This is good but also be careful to not overly rely on your ARs. The AR's position is fixed by both the touchline and where they are required to stand along it. The referee has the ability to move and find the angles and proximity to see play. Keep working on the earlier position comments and this should help reduce the amount of AR assistance needed.

The whistle is the referee's voice on the field. As you develop, you will learn to clearly communicate different aspects of the game with your whistle. During this match your whistle was inaudible. This led to confusion by the players and coaches and resulted in situations where play continued after you blew the whistle. You stated that you have ordered a new whistle from a referee web site. This is good. Once you receive it, practice blowing it (in the garage, at a park, alone in the house, etc...). There is no such thing as the whistle being too loud on the field, so practice to make yourself be heard. We also discussed proper goal kick and corner kick signals (45 degrees up and 45 degrees over).

Referee presented a professional appearance

Zuheir - Completing your first match as center referee is a big step and I commend you for doing this. It was clear that you were gaining confidence as the game progressed. This will continue to happen as you do more games. Make whistle work, mechanics (proper signaling), and distance from play your priority points for improvement in the next few games. Achieving these will allow you to focus more on the finer points of the game. I also want to mention that you counted players before each half began. This allowed you to recognize that Rapids were about to start the match with an extra player, who you then had removed. Good job as this avoided the drama and potential disrepute that could have ensued if the game started with an extra player. Thank you for being a referee and I hope to see you throughout the season.

Zuheir was challenged by this match. Beyond what is discussed here, there were multiple uncalled fouls and a few instances where he blew the whistle, which few heard, and then he just let play continue. We did discuss this, but in order of priorities I did not discuss foul recognition with him. If possible, I would recommend allowing Zuheir a few low-level matches to work on the emphases points we discussed. After that, another mentor game could look for improvement.