How I Became a PAL Soccer Ref – and Scored!

By Steve Symanovich

Steve Symanovich is editor of the San Francisco Business Times. This article appeared in April 2011. He reffed his first PAL soccer game a short time after, and reported no incidences of fan abuse. He hopes to ref PAL games for many more years.

Some time ago, during a period of supreme contentment, I realized something was missing from my life. What could it be?

I contemplated my life, surrounded, as it were, by goodness and niceness. I confided in my wife. I explained how living a utopian existence of continual affection and approval had left me with an empty feeling.

“Maybe you should become a PAL soccer referee,” she said.

Suddenly a lightbulb went on. She was right. I don’t have nearly enough abuse in my life.

That’s not a problem for youth soccer refs. Parents and coaches often treat them like verbal punching bags.

I had stood on the sidelines long enough watching my two daughters play soccer to hear screaming moms and dads hammer referees for good calls, bad calls and no calls. “Wake up ref! Are you blind?”

Parents can be brutal, and why wouldn’t they be? Eight-year-old Dylan’s or 9-year-old Sophie’s future professional soccer career depended on it.

My daughters are teens now, and I’m proud to say I’ve never yelled at the refs. If I don’t like a call, I prefer to emit a tortured, multisyllabic grunt: “Aaarrrrgggggrrr-guh-guh-guh-rrrgh!”

I guess that’s not good. It was time to atone for my transgressions.

“I’ll do it,” I told my wife.

Soccer duty calls
Soon after, I got an email from my wife. “So you’re going to do the PAL ref training, right?” she wrote.

“When?” I wrote back.

“Saturday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.” she replied.

I winced. Eight hours on a Saturday. “I’m on the fence.” I wrote. “I’m leaning toward no.”

“Chicken,” she wrote back. “Turncoat. Traitor.”

“OK, sign me up,” I wrote.

“I already did,” she replied.

Still sleepy, I showed up for the training session. About 25 other would-be refs had already taken seats in the classroom. Like me, they were there to fill a need — a shortage of refs in a high-turnover profession. Unlike me, their average age was 13 years old.

The instructor, a big guy with the air of one marinated in soccer for a lifetime, looked me up and down. “How did you get here?” he said.

At the end of the day, I took the 50-question multiple-choice test and squeaked by with a “B.”

The referee has arrived
Word got out that I had nabbed my PAL referee credential.

I’d see my familiar circle of soccer moms and dads. They treated me with the reverence of one who has lost his mind.

“PAL soccer ref, eh?” said one dad. “You need the money?”

Another said, “I guess you like getting smacked around.”

A soccer mom assured me that I would look good in a shiny yellow shirt, black shorts and knee socks. She suggested I audition for a “Men of Youth Soccer” calendar, and laughed.

It worked.

I haven’t reffed my first game, and already I feel abused.

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