The next three weekends are very trying on our athletes.  We host 3 weekends of the club tournaments and we have the athletes referee.  It is a good opportunity for them to be on the other side of the whistle.  I feel it teaches them respect and patience for the officials we have.

It was a great learning experience for me.  One season when I was coaching in Grande Prairie at the junior college the league had a disagreement with the salary structure of the officials.  The officials being part of a union decided that they had enough matches with CIS and high school they wouldn’t officiate the ACAC that year.  Basically the ref’s went on strike. This put us in a big predicament in Grande Prairie.

We used some alumni men as our officials for most of the matches.  During one pre-season men’s tournament our alumni couldn’t officiate.  I then had to ref the tournament.  It was a relatively fun experience.  Since it was preseason the coaches were a bit more relaxed, but they all took the opportunity to disagree with my calls.  One that sticks out in my mind was Richard Schick.  He was coaching Red Deer College at the time and was playing against our Men’s team at GPRC.  This is a pretty intense rivalry at the best of time.  Early in the match a Grande Prairie player was blocked.  He was covered by a teammate but the ball stuck in his arms for a second.   The game continued.  Rich was up giving me the gears.  He was right I blew the call, about three plays later the same thing happened against Red Deer.  This time I was on my game and ready.  I blew it down.  Rich was up again, before he could say anything I yelled at him “Rich I thought about the last time this happened and agreed with you it was a held ball. That is why I am calling it now.  We will call it this way the rest of the match.”  Rich just laughed looked at Ron GPRC men’s coach and shook his head.  “Carter, how can you get mad at Carter”

That incident was a good lesson for me.  I have always since then went out of my way to meet the officials and talk to them.  I find that I am the same way, the more I know the official the more relaxed I am towards them when we disagree on something.

The first weekend was U-16. Our athletes had some funny experiences as well.  The parents were giving one of the first year players a rough time.  The players on one team really tried to sell touches.  Every hit they would call for a touch as a group.  The parents would then start giving the ref a rough time for missing the touch.  Finally she had enough and stops the match and gave the parents a bit of a tongue lashing.  After that they were good.  We talked after about having thicker skin on the stand and not engaging the parents.  Just gives them the right to yell more.

Another athlete called a player over the line on serve.  The coach protested that she wasn’t close.  The player referee, points to the black line.  “it the black line correct?” The coached just laughed and sat down.  We have received three emails stating how impressed they were with the athletes.  They were polite, understood the game and interacted well with the athletes.  Interested weekend,

This weekend U-14