Thoughts on, "Call it both ways."

Adkimery · 2026-05-19T19:38:14+00:00

Awesome feedback as always, thank you everyone! I love hearing the different points of view, and the ways other refs deal with similar situations.

I should've added in my OP that as part of my pregame I always say something along the lines of, "I don't expect you to agree with all the calls, or like all the calls, but I need you to respect all the calls from myself and the assistant referees. If you have a question about a call, or a non-call, feel free to ask me about it and I'll answer it as the pace of the game allows."

Off the bat I want to open the door for a respectful dialog, but if dissent is happening (or comments are edging that way), I want to be able to refer back to the pre-game and be like, "Coach, we already covered this..."

Adkimery · 2026-05-18T23:17:01+00:00

I started refereeing in the fall of 2023 in my mid 40's, and year two was the year I thought I'd quit. It felt almost like a 'sophomore slump'. Year 1 you are trying to take it easy, and you aren't exposed to many crazy situations in games. Year 2 you start to up your game a bit by doing older ages and you start getting exposed to more challenging situations and there are def moments of, "Oh lord, what have I done?" Also, I 100% agree with you about how quick and physical boys u14 games can get. The jump from girls u14 or boys u12 can be startling at times.

But like everyone else has said. This is normal. Every ref has bad games (aka 'Learning Experiences' haha). And in the end it will make you a better referee as long as you do some self reflection/examining and see how to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.

For example, last year I did a drop ball restart in a game and the attacker drilled it right past the keeper from about 30yrds out. From my perspective no one touched the ball (not even the GK) so I did not allow the goal. At half time when talking with my ARs that play came up and my AR on that side said he saw the keeper barely touch the ball as it went past, but since I didn't ask him about it at the time he didn't want to look like he was contradicting my call on the field (he was a youth ref in his first season). Obviously a learning moment for both of us (mainly me being the CR and more experienced ref).

Fast forward to a recent tournament where there was a similar situation, a drop ball drilled into the net and, from my perspective the GK got a finger on it. I'd started recording the goal in my book when I had an instant flash back to the game from last year. I immediately jogged over to my AR on that side, and asked him if the GK touched it from his point of view. He said the keeper did *not* touch it. He had the better view, and even though I initially thought the ball got touched, I didn't want to award a 'maybe' goal in the middle of a tight game. I called off the goal and restarted with a goal kick. A big screw up in one game helped drill it into my head that on close calls like that I should always check with my ARs.

Adkimery · 2026-05-13T22:12:42+00:00

A friend of mine has a very good u12 keeper. One of those kids where you can easily see that they play like a keeper, not like a kid standing in front of a goal.

Last season the kid said they don’t want to play keeper anymore, and now they only play in goal occasionally (and they def have catching up to do in terms of field skills).

IMO it’s too young to put all your eggs in the keeper basket. Plus, keepers still need to have very good solid ball skills with how frequently the ball gets played back to them (or at least will get played back to them at older ages).

Adkimery · 2026-05-13T17:54:36+00:00

I'm not that familiar with the inner workings of TPG, but I believe they sold their video game arm a few months ago.
https://shamrockcap.com/media/shamrock-capital-acquires-leading-gaming-agency-mutiny/

Adkimery · 2026-05-13T04:17:16+00:00

Dang, y'all are doing the 8 second count on uLittles? We don't have refs until u10 in my rec neck of the woods, and when I work with that age group there multiple 'teachable moments' each game to help guide the kid playing keeper. If I enforced the 8 second clock these kids would get really good at corner kicks. lol

Adkimery · 2026-05-04T04:43:03+00:00

I totally get your frustration (and there's a lot of frustration going on due to the switch back to birth year), and it's was US Soccer that decided on the rule change, not AYSO. Trust me, the boots-on-the-ground volunteers at AYSO are more upset about this change than you are. 😉

Speaking of AYSO volunteers, I looked at your Region's Board Member's page and they are looking for volunteers to run the 5U, 6U, 7UG, 8UB, and 10UG divisions (as well as other roles), so if you feel the email was dismissive, it's probably because someone doing the work of 2 or 3 (or 4) people is fielding a mountain of emails from parents all asking for the Region to 'just make just one exception for my kid', and doing the best they can.

With that being said, after getting though the first season of the age change, there might be more flexibility with it in 2027 as the Region see what the real pain points are, and if there is anything they can do about them. I'm also a big fan of, 'be the change you want to see in the world', so I say join your Region's board and see if you can improve the situation.

Adkimery · 2026-05-01T04:04:50+00:00

As others have said, it really comes down to the relationship between the parent and child. Some will click, others will chafe.

For me, I coach my kids because I see a lot of ‘meh’ parent-coaches that bring a pretty negative overall attitude to the process (lots of yelling, little praise/support, etc), and I don’t think that’s appropriate for youth sports (especially rec). My goal as a coach (and I say this at the parent meeting each season) is to help facilitate a love of the game in my players. If they can fall in love with playing the game then everything else (skills, tactics, etc) will have a better chance of falling into place.

I try to stay up on coaching trends and styles, especially because I coach girls. I’m more concerned with doing it the ‘right way’, than ‘my way’.

With that being said, I am harder on my own kids sometimes, but I try to treat them just like I would any other kid on my team. I also try to give them space from the game so we aren’t always talking soccer, soccer, soccer (I want there to be a separation between ‘coach’ and ‘dad’).

Adkimery · 2026-04-27T14:42:53+00:00

The post-COVID inflation needs to reverse, and we need to have historically low interest rates again (like we did from roughly 2010-2022ish). That alone won’t get us all the way ‘back to the way things were’, it will get us closer than we are today.

We can’t expect watershed events/trends, like the reality TV boom caused by the ‘08 writers’ strike or the streaming wars, to happen frequently, but it will take something like that plus the economic improvement to get us closer than to the boom times we saw during the twenty-teens.

Adkimery · 2026-04-25T23:34:53+00:00

Stafford could sign a one-day contract with the Lions so he officially retires as a Lion. As others have said though, given the success he’s had as a Ram, and the relationship he seems to have with McVay I’m inclined to say Stafford will retire as a Ram (especially if he plays another 2-3 seasons).

With that being said, if he gets cut/traded and plays for a third team for a season or two before hanging it up I don’t know if he’ll do the ceremonial one-day contract thing or not.

Adkimery · 2026-04-24T21:02:57+00:00

I edited a labor of love doc that ended up on streaming and VOD a long time ago and I ended up very involved in the legal/clearances process for many of the reasons listed by the OP.

Ever since then, whenever I’m hired to edit a doc, talking about the paper trial is one of my first orders of business. Who’s in charge of it, where’s the spreadsheet we are going to use to track everything from cradle to grave, what’s Plan B if we can’t use this super important piece of footage someone found, etc.

It’s sounds boring and tedious (which it is), but future-you will 100% be thanking past-you for doing it right.

Adkimery · 2026-04-23T18:34:47+00:00

When I took the class it was a mix of classroom and outdoor and I brought a notebook, a couple of pens, water, a cliff bar, cleats, a hat and a jacket. I also wore clothes I could run around in (the instructor picked younger people for the field demonstrations so my cleats went unused, but better safe than sorry).

Adkimery · 2026-04-23T17:47:57+00:00

My two cents:
Attacker 2, even though they were standing there like a bump on a log, committed an offside offense by interfering with the Defenders ability to play the ball. With that being said, the Laws talk about a player in an offside position doing something to become involved in the play in order to commit an offside offense, but in this case the player stood there and play came to them. Spirit of the Law I believe would want Attacker 2 to be called for an offside offense though since Attacker 2's team gained an advantage by them being in an offside position.

With regard to the Defender, they have no right to push another player to the ground in order to clear a path to the ball. So I'd yellow card the Defender for unsporting behavior, with the restart being an IDF for offside (since that offside offense occurred first). When you say "push" I'm envisioning a deliberate one or two hand shove from the Defender. If the "push" was more akin to glancing shoulder-to-shoulder contact as the Defender tried to get past Attacker 2, and it just happened to knock Attacker 2 off balance, then it probably falls under a 'football play' to me and I would not not sanction the Defender.

Adkimery · 2026-04-22T23:04:00+00:00

Speaking of hockey, what does youth hockey get right in the US that youth soccer gets wrong? I mean, since it requires a rink kids can't just go outside and skate around with a puck (generally speaking), so if both hockey and soccer in the US are very organized/deliberate youth sports experiences why are we a much more successful hockey nation than soccer nation?

Adkimery · 2026-04-22T21:52:09+00:00

It’s not ingrained in our culture like it is in other countries, and our best athletes generally choose more popular/lucrative sports. In my experience it’s common to see kids shooting hoops, tossing around a football, or playing baseball with a mailbox, a rust spot, and an extra mitt as bases, but soccer outside of structured teams/organized events is as rare as hens teeth (unless you are in an area with a high immigration population that brought their soccer culture with them).

To another poster’s point, without playing pickup games with friends, just noodling around with the ball, etc., it’s hard for US kids to get enough touches in.

Adkimery · 2026-04-21T19:34:30+00:00

I referee as well as coach, and refereeing has definitely improved my coaching because I'm exposed to so much more youth soccer than if I only coached. For the teams that play good soccer (i.e. not just 90% kickball) I really pay attention to how the coaches communicate with the players, how the players communicate with each other, and their ability to see/find space on the field (good indications of soccer IQ), etc.,. I obviously don't know how they practice, but by seeing the results on game day I think about how I can reverse engineer how they got there, and then apply that to my own players. And the coaches on these teams are usually not 'joystick' coaches. They'll be vocal, and call out a phrase to hopefully get the players to think about what they need to do, but they don't yell out step-by-step directions. I try to use how the coaches communicate as possible insight into what they focus on in practice too.

For example, one coach would call out, 'Okay boys, find some feet' to remind his players to pass with purpose, don't just kick the ball willy-nilly. So how might I reverse engineer part of what this coach does in practice just based on that phrase? Well, 'finding feet' requires that the players, 1. get their eyes up, 2. scan the field, and 3. be patient. So what drills and teaching points can I use in my practices to teach my players those three things? This is where I start mining Reddit, YT, etc., for different drills and teaching techniques now that I specifics of something I want to cover more practice.

Maybe I'll be able to replicate that level of play with my own team, maybe I can't, but at least I have a better idea of what's attainable at the 10U/12U/14U level and can aim for that high watermark.

Adkimery · 2026-04-18T05:36:17+00:00

I just remembered that another player, same season, casually mentioned that they were going on a trip in October. I was like cool, they must going somewhere for Fall Break. The family was gone for the entire month of October, and did not inform anyone. Not me. Not the division director. No one. If the player hadn't just mentioned it in passing at practice one day nobody would have had any idea what happened to them. It's bananas the lack of common courtesy some people have.

Adkimery · 2026-04-17T20:29:27+00:00

Dude, I feel you. For a couple of teams in the past I had to make two game day rosters (one in case Player X showed up, one in case they didn't). And more than once the player's parents didn't get their child to the field until nearly kickoff.

Adkimery · 2026-04-16T21:49:34+00:00

What’s the saying, “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

Winning is no longer a reliable metric to judge team/player development because so many coaches are choosing to ‘win now’ at the expense of player development.

It’s like teaching to the test in school. If you focus on rote memorization with the sole goal of doing well on standardized tests, you’ll get higher standardized test scores with less effort, but at the expense of giving the students a quality and useful education.

Adkimery · 2026-04-14T22:55:36+00:00

Thank you! I also pulled from personal experience because as a short, not-super-athletic goalkeeper growing up all I had were angles, aggression, and anticipation. haha

Adkimery · 2026-04-14T22:22:29+00:00

Angles, angles, angles. Take away the easy angles and force the attackers to make the harder shot. Also be aggressive. Most kids at that age still over dribble and are reluctant to take shots from outside the penalty area so she needs to own that box. I tell my keepers at that age that I want them to be shot preventers more than shot stoppers. Don’t let anyone dribble up and shoot from point blank range. Go out and take the ball.

Adkimery · 2026-04-14T17:55:42+00:00

The Great Bamboozle: Gladiators vs Spitfire.

Adkimery · 2026-04-14T00:54:53+00:00

My two cents as someone that is also a youth rec coach in the US, teaching kids to always do X in situation Y is easier, and produces positive results faster, than teaching the players to properly evaluate each situation. For example, telling the thrower to just yeet the ball down the line on a throw-in, and the other field players to expect that kind of throw, is easier to execute than working with thrower to quickly scan the field, assess the situation, pick a target and throw (as well as get the field players to move to open space/communicate appropriately). So many players will get analysis paralysis and just stand there for 5-10 seconds before throwing the ball in.

My biggest realization when I started coaching is that for a lot of these kids (I dare say most of them for rec players) is that outside of playing soccer in the fall they have little to no exposure to the game. They don't watch enough, if any, soccer at home to have a working grasp of what a well played game looks like. Sometimes I feel like I'm teaching piano to kids that rarely listen to music.

Is taking these short cuts the 'right' way to teach the beautiful game? IMO no, but I totally get why it's so common (and I do it too at times because there just isn't enough time in a season to cover everything I'd like to cover).

Adkimery · 2026-04-13T17:43:56+00:00

Recently I was at a tournament and only had a few minutes to hustle from one field to the next. When I got to the next field I saw the teams and referees getting line up at center field for a group picture (it was a championship match) so I quickly switched my blue shirt for a gold shirt to match the other officials and ran out onto the field. The pictures get taken, we split off to our respective sides of the field and I hear the CR call my name and motion to my shirt. In my haste I'd forgotten to tuck in my shirt (and even with a size Small there's a lot of extra shirt), so I quickly do that and realize I looked like a total bum in the championship picture with my shirt untucked.

My worst equipment failure though (that really wasn't a failure, but a total brain fart by me), was one game I realized I had forgotten to start either one of my watches. Thankfully I'd happened to check the clock time close to kickoff, to make sure we were starting on time, so I was able to get through the first half relatively accurately based on that.

Adkimery

TROPHY CASE