REFS NEED LOVE TOO
An honest perspective from the 3rd team on the pitch... the referees. Through humor, analysis and education, we are slowly changing how people view referees and officials in all sports. We care and have a love for the game as much as any player or coach. Sometimes even more. Youth soccer (proper football) is a multi-billion $ industry in the US. Tremendous money is spent on players, competitions, travel etc., but almost nothing spent on developing the next generation of referees. I hope that this Podcast inspires, educates and humanizes the next generation of referees for their own development and appreciation from the players, coaches and spectators they need to work alongside.
REFS NEED LOVE TOO
The Mental Game: Building Better Referees with Kevin Klinger
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Pressure doesn’t just come from the scoreboard—it lives in your head and your chest when the crowd roars and a coach questions your integrity. We sit down with Kevin Klinger, Director of Referee Education and Development at U.S. Officials and founder of Officials Mental Edge, to break down the mental skills that separate solid refs from truly elite officials. Kevin brings a rare dual lens as a longtime pro referee and licensed counselor, translating sports psychology into practical, on‑field tools.
We unpack how a real development ecosystem goes far beyond assignments: structured curricula, on‑site sessions, online learning, and high‑level mentorship that builds focus, confidence, and resilience over time. Kevin maps the moments that derail referees—performance attacks like biased or blind, identity jabs, background slights, and disrespectful behaviors—and explains why naming triggers is the first step to control. From there, he lays out a repeatable reset: acknowledge you’re triggered, center with deliberate breath and strong posture, address the conflict with clarity, then consciously transition before the next decision. It’s a trainable protocol that stops rumination, reduces compounding errors, and keeps your head in the game.
We also dive into retention and why so many officials leave between years one and two. The fix isn’t just more laws‑of‑the‑game lectures; it’s teaching emotional regulation, mistake recovery, and communication early. Kevin shares elite habits you can use today: ask your crew before kickoff to find one improvement for you, journal after matches, review targeted clips to prime decision‑making, and use visualization to rehearse tough moments. Along the way, you’ll hear candid stories, gear hacks for focus, and quick takes on captain interactions and pregame routines.
If you’re serious about refereeing—whether you’re working grassroots or aiming for the pro pathway—these mental skills are your edge. Listen, take notes, and try one reset routine in your next match. If this episode helps, follow the show, share it with your crew, and leave a review so more referees can build their mental game with us.
Hello and welcome to the Refs Need Love2 Podcast, a show that gives you a real, raw, and behind-the-scenes view of one of the hardest jobs on the pitch, the referee. I'm your host, David Gerson, a grassroots referee and certified mentor with over 11 years of experience and over 1,400 matches under my belt. You can find me at refsneadlove2.com, on Insta, TikTok, and now on YouTube. Today's guest is Kevin Klinger, the new director of referee education and development at U.S. officials. Kevin is a professional soccer referee, referee educator, and mental health professional with over 25 years of officiating experience. He's currently in his 15th season working in Major League Soccer, has been with Pro since its inception. He's officiated some of the highest profile matches in American Soccer Pathway, including the U.S. Opracup Final, USL Championship, and USL One Finals, as well as several national youth finals. Off the field, Kevin brings a rare dual perspective to referee development. By day, he's a licensed professional counselor and certified sports psychology coach. By night he has lived the pressure, scrutiny, and emotional demands of an elite officiating. He's also the founder of Officials Mental Edge, a mental performance education platform created specifically for soccer referees. I'm so interested in this. Through practical referee-specific psychoeducational content, the platform focuses on helping officials develop the skills for focus, confidence, emotional regulation, mistake recovery, and long-term sustainability in the role. My gosh, we need that. He currently serves as the Director of Referee Education Development for U.S. officials, an organization founded over 15 years ago to create pathways for referees to succeed and serve competitive leagues with professionalism and integrity. Kevin's work is driven by a simple belief. When we intentionally teach referees the mental and emotional skills required for the job, we don't just create better referees, we keep them in the game longer. Amen. Kevin, welcome to the pod, man. It's a novel idea that referees are humans. They're humans, they have feelings, emotions, they have lives all outside of the soccer bench. I mean, like that whole thing. It's like a crazy thing. But yes, humanizing referees is a good first step. And I'm glad we've taken it. Kevin, you've gotten a new job recently. So I just saw the announcement literally last week come out. I was like, oh my gosh, I need to talk to him. So you are now, again, the director. I want to get the title right. It's the director of referee education and development at U.S. officials. Now, those who may not know U.S. officials are like, wait, is that US soccer? So what is US officials?
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, the quality of the officiating makes a very big difference to the quality of the matches that are played during those events. And there are so many examples of events who are just literally trying to grab any warm body and throw it on the pitch. And the quality of the soccer is poor. The experience for the players, coaches, and spectators is poor. When you do have organizations such as a U.S. officials that is vetting the referees that are coming, developing the referees when they're there, creating the atmosphere and the expectations for what we're going to be putting on the pitch as a refereeing crew, what are our points of emphasis and everyone being professional? And also that cross-pollination. When you bring in these great referees from other countries, and I've been to a US officials group, a national, uh, a national league like championship event down in Orlando, and you're bringing in the CONCACAF refs and the refs from Europe. I mean, it makes you up your game. And so you get better soccer on the pitch. But it is an interesting time. I think you said it, that people are finally recognizing the referee is not an externality. That is because again, it's very easy to say, well, that's U.S. soccer's job to develop the referees or give them education. Nothing now. There's, you know, I'm working for SoCal Soccer League and you for U.S. officials. So walk me a little bit through those. So this new role, director of referee education development for U.S. officials specifically, what problem are you most excited to solve? So talk to me about director of referee education development specifically for U.S. officials. What is going to be your areas of focus?
SPEAKER_02:I think at a high level, my role exists to make sure that referees aren't just assigned well to appropriate games, but they're developed intentionally. When I came on board, my idea that I pitched was that we need to develop a development ecosystem. It can't be just hit and miss. A mentor comes in, gives a kid random feedback, and that's all they get. And then we never hear from the mentor again, or the referee never really takes that on board in a meaningful way. And so we have to develop systems to do it over time, to help a referee grow themselves and their skills. There's ways that we can quantify that. There's ways that we can build systems around development as a bigger picture. It's not just happening just on the field. It's doing education online. It's doing education in the morning and midday sessions and then doing evening sessions and really including a variety of perspectives. And part of my job is to develop that curriculum and have a direction for what that should look like. Obviously, the mental skills and the psychological skills are really important to me, and I've made that a huge part of what I bring to the table. And then obviously, I coordinate the mentors that we bring in. I'm really proud of the high quality of mentors. Like you said, we get to be KONCACAF and professional referees, and we have Champions League final referees, and I'm really proud of those relationships. Levon knew that bringing me on was going to bring about some professionalism. Obviously, as a professional referee, I hold myself to a really high standard. And that can trickle down in really meaningful ways about things that I've learned over my career. The referees who are part of our event, most of them want to be where I am. And we can help prepare them with the skills that they need to get to that next level if we do it with intentionality and some strategies. We ask referees to manage the immense amount of pressures on the field. We ask them to diffuse conflict. We ask them to recover from mistakes with poison professionalism. And my job is to make sure that we teach them how.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. One thing that's interesting about it, and again, for those who don't know, Levon is the owner of U.S. officials, right? Sounder owner. And so one thing that I think would be interesting to talk about is what's missing. These referees who are all across the US or maybe internationally and coming to these events, what do you think is probably the most common thing that people are lacking to make it to that next level? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I think what stood out to me wasn't the lack of effort or lack of good people, but I think maybe just a gap in what we emphasize in our referee training and development. And that's for all referee organizations. I think just globally we have a gap in how we prepare referees. For example, you train during the week. We have physical training, we have technical training where we're watching videos or analyzing clips, and then we have mental training. But I'd be willing to bet that most referees, like yourself and those who watch this podcast, the split's probably 80% physical, 20% technical, and 0% mental preparation. And that's not because they don't want to improve, it's they don't know what they don't know. They don't know how beneficial and how impactful the mental and emotional skills are. We do a really good job in this country. There's a lot of really high quality educators that do technical sessions and laws and interpretations, but almost no one is talking about mental skills, at least from a really credible perspective. We have great mental skills and resilience people. We have great soccer people. There's very few people that kind of have both. And I think that's probably my niche. And at the highest level, even though you're spending 80% of your time doing fitness, for professionals, fitness is a threshold. That's how everyone is fit. And the World Cup referees are not. So the real separation between the great and elite or the good and the great is our decision making and our emotional regulation and our communication. And those soft skills have to be coming from somewhere. And if they're not getting them organically from your life experience, like you did with your dad, we have to teach them. And there usually is ways that we can teach those pieces.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, a thousand percent agree. I was fortunate to have a corporate career of 27 years in, and I was doing sales, so I got a lot of sales training skills. So there's interpersonal skills there. And then I was also a sales trainer. So I literally learned skills such as negotiation and dealing with difficult people and handling objections and presentation skills, which are all things that you need to use on the pitch. My gosh, when you're a manager, if you've been a director or an executive at a company and you have to lead groups of people, whatnot, it's not by fiat. It's not by, I said we do this. I said it's a value of this command and control. That rarely works well for anyone. And it might work for a little bit of time, but it's going to come back and bite you. But those personal skills, those interpersonal skills, the psychology and confidence, the resilience thing is so unbelievably important. And talk to me a little about this organization again that you set up, the officials mental edge.
SPEAKER_02:So I that's my company, Officials Mental Edge. I just launched it this year, coinciding at the same time with me being announced the director for U.S. officials. Congratulations, by the way. Thank you. I appreciate that. So I think for me, the idea for Officials Mental Edge is a platform where I can use social media to not only humanize referees like you're doing, I'll be doing some content that is me filming behind the scenes. For example, I've got a pillar called From Behind the Touchline, where I talk directly to the camera to referees about my mental preparation before the game, literally walking the field as I'm getting ready for my game and then talking about what I'm thinking about, what I'm preparing. And then after the game, what are some of my reflections? How do I intentionally debrief myself and reflecting on my performance? And then I also have some content about me traveling on the road because for referees, listen, we live in our cars. That is true for all sports. We've all, yeah, long drives, late nights, early mornings, all those things. And that's a grind. And it's a real, it's a real thing for us, and there's a whole lot of stress involved. I wanted to normalize that and talk about things we can do during that travel time to make ourselves better. And then for me, the last pillar is doing really explicit psychoeducational content where we call it the mental edge moment, where I'm in a studio setting where I am teaching explicit psychological mental skills directly to referees from the referee perspective. But then obviously I do keynote speaking and lead education. I do Zooms like this all the time where organizations and SRCs come have me and teach classes. So I love doing it. I'm an educator by nature, and it's one of the ways that I feel I can give back to the community because I would not be a professional without people pouring into me. And I think it's my turn to pour into others.
SPEAKER_00:Oh my gosh, Kevin, dude, if anyone's listening to this, your local state referee organization or committee, if you have not had Kevin as a guest speaker, reach out to your SRA right now, your high school association, reach out now because I got to tell you, you talk about the again, when you're on the road or traveling as a referee, but just gosh, in the car ride home, how do you not beat yourself up and recover and prepare for the next match? The pregame. Oh my gosh. If I don't have a proper pregame before a match, man, I am really my feathers are ruffled. I'll tell you that. It is very difficult for me to be at my best. So I can't wait to hear more. I was like, I'm gonna forward it to my Georgia people. You need this guy. Let's go. Get him on. Give me a call. Get him on. Let's hire you. I'm here for it. I like it. So walk us through a practical mental skill exercise. What are the things that we can do or actually use to help us as referees?
SPEAKER_02:I actually sent you something that I think we should talk about. I gave him some homework, ladies and gentlemen. I sent him two pieces that I develop to help uh build self-awareness. Because for me, the mental skills really start with awareness. If we don't have awareness of what is happening internally, we can't hope to really improve it. And I gave David a self-awareness exercise. The first piece is helping him identify his triggers, what sets him off, what gets a rise out of him. And these are very referee-specific triggers. Only referees are going to be really able to relate to that, at least I hope that most professions don't have people yelling. So for him to identify his triggers. So he's got a whole list of triggers that he was going to dig into himself a little bit to see what set him off. And then the second one was his reactions to those triggers. So once you are triggered, what's your sort of default emotional response? And there's some patterns there that we can anticipate. There's a lot of referees who shut down. There's referees who become emotional. There's referees who get angry and anywhere and everywhere in between. I'm really curious to see how your experience was using those two self-assessments. Tell me about that process for you.
SPEAKER_00:I was triggered reading your triggering worksheet. Double trigger. And the fact that every single thing that you have written on this worksheet is something that either I've personally experienced or I know of someone who's experienced. So I gotta tell you, it's sad that this exists and it's real, man. All of these things. And can I read a few of the things? I'll talk to you. So I just I think these are so interesting. So this is the you're reading this document of the different experiences, things that could be said to you or thrown your way, insults, if you will, of things to attacking you. And in the first category, there's something called performance-based trick triggers. And he's got these words here, okay? Cheater, biased, homer, coward, incompetent, blind, unqualified, in over your head. Okay. Things that people might actually say to you or insinuate about you when you're on the pitch. And I have to tell you, the first two there hit me really hard in the chest because my whole, my whole life, my whole thing is my word is oak. Like I am, I am who I am. It's all about honesty and it's all about transparency. And if someone is going to call me a cheater or that I'm being biased towards one team, that really upsets me. Because I work so hard to not be that person. And those are the two that jumped out to me cheater and biased performance-wise. Oh my gosh, that instantly gets my goat.
SPEAKER_02:Triggered, fascinating too. My integrity. Call my integrity into question. Because referees, we hold ourselves to a really high standard. And I think that's probably common for a lot of referees.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. The next category was personal appearance and identity triggers. I didn't circle any of them myself, but I know so many people. And I'm just going to read these out. Fat, old, slow, bald, midget, four-eyes, ugly, too young. How many times are referees, young teenage referees who are doing a great job out there getting yelled at as you're too young to be out there, whatever? You're a token ref or a DEI hire. Someone says racist or sexist, homophobic, you name it, culture, and there's so many things. Thankfully for me, I don't get triggered if someone was to say one of those things to me, but I know so many people who have had these things said to them and it has caused them to really lose their composure and be very affected and have led to people literally quitting.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And I think I think the key there is that if you are already insecure, some of those things, or you already feel just a little bit less than, or you judge yourself about it, or you've got some sensitivity about that area, once they find that that sort of, I call it like the vulnerability in your armor, like the middle evil armor that had that hole like right in the armpit or at the neck, it's like it can get right to you. So if you're already sensitive and they find it, if you don't know that's your trigger, because once you are aware of it, you can do something about it. Yes. But if you are not aware of it and you don't know how to protect against it, you're vulnerable and you just come unraveled.
SPEAKER_00:My gosh. I I have had these types of conversations with referees, like saying, again, you gotta love yourself first and be comfortable in your own skin and appreciate who you are and forget about what anyone else says about those things. But yes, it can definitely be triggering for someone if someone is body shaming someone or some kind of nature, or oh my gosh, at age, either too old or too young, or any of those types of things. Yeah, it can be really hurtful. And again, it's yes, it's that moment, but there's so much other pent-up emotional trauma that may have happened over years that that kind of build into that moment as well.
SPEAKER_02:All that baggage with you right out into the field. Plug gates are open.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. The next category was background and belief-based triggers. And it's interesting. Okay, so I'm gonna read you the ones on the sheet. I'm gonna tell you the one that really triggers me. You're not from here. Go back to where you came from. That's why women shouldn't ref. You people always call it that way. You people. The key phrase there. You're just here because they need diversity. Or someone makes a religious insult, again, political, family-based. People make fun of someone's accent, right? Football's a global game. I have friends that are Korean, Indian, Turkey and every African country, every South American country. And people will make fun of people's accent and something that's just so awful. Okay. Whether I am a referee and it's about my assistant referee, or I'm an assistant referee and someone says it about the referee, is someone makes a comment, that's why women shouldn't ref. I, if I have a female referee on my crew and someone makes some chauvinistic comment like that, I pretty much lose it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's hard to keep your composure. Even though it's not tapping into something you're sensitive about, but we defend people. And one of the things that I say to referees all the time is that you have to defend your colleagues like you would defend your spouse or your child or your abuela, or you could call me the B-word. Yeah. And you would have this much reaction.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:If you call my wife the B-word, yeah, that's natural. And so I I encourage referees to defend their partners with that same sort of mentality. That if you would be offended and you would have a big reaction about someone you really love and care about, you should have the same sort of defensive, protective reaction about your crewmates.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, without a doubt. I got zero tolerance for that one. Let me tell you. Zero. The last category was disrespectful tone and behavior-based trick triggers when, and this is really important for dissent and having composure when there is dissent as well. We don't want to overreact and lose our composure, and then the moral high ground is gone. And I've seen this happen so many times. But when someone laughs at your call or eye rolling in sarcastic clapping, mocking someone, crowd, the crowd chanting, I love this. Ref, you suck. Welcome to high school soccer. That's a classic. We're obviously professional. My gosh, I don't know that I've been to an MLS game where the crowd at some point has not chanted, ref, you suck. That seems to be like the main thing that they do now. Seriously. Offensive gestures, someone gives a middle finger or like a chin flick or something else. Uh passive aggression. Uh oh, okay. I'm gonna come back to this one. The passive aggressive comments, thanks for ruining the game, or you lost us the game, or thanks for losing us the game, whatever. The staring you down, what type of thing, intimidating it. I see this so often. My gosh, especially you nine, you ten things. Those parents, these coaches are crazy. Threatening to call your administrator or the tournament administrator, your assigner, your boss. For me, okay, I wrote this one in, I added this one. You're just a TikTok ref. Ooh. Oh, that's so beautifully.
SPEAKER_02:It's not beautiful, it's sort of pretty devious, uh, but pretty clever because that they're skilled at finding that little weakness, because only someone like you would react to it, right? Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Tip of the cap, but also So the ones that I the the one that I circled on, this one was the it's a passive aggressive thing. Thanks for ruining the game. The one that really gets my goat is you lost us the game. Like after the match, if a coach or a player says that to me. When it's been a 90-minute match and they lost five to two. Yeah. And then they say that. Really? I have a hard time shutting my mouth and just saying thanks.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and now all of those things. And when we feel like we have to defend ourselves, that's a really good indicator that it's a trigger for us. If we feel like we have to justify it and give counterexamples in this, if we're already triggered.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, a thousand percent. And listen, I am gonna just say it and admit to it. There's been about two or three times in a tight match where a coach after the game said, You lost us the game, whatever, on one call that was like 70 yards up the pitch or something of the nature. And like, you know what? I didn't call a foul that I didn't think was a foul. And in both situations, and again, listen, I make mistakes all the time. But both situations, I got the video afterwards. There you go for that evidence to rely on. Oh my gosh. I tell you, if someone says that to me, Kevin, I swear I will not stop thinking about that for two weeks. Absolutely will get my go. And it's a problem. I I shouldn't allow someone's throwaway comment that is really all about their insecurities and whatnot, affect me like that. Yeah. But it does. It does.
SPEAKER_02:So the trigger is what sets you off. Your reaction is ruminating, right? When you play it over and over, and then you have to look for those counterexamples you have, right? You shouldn't be thinking about a decision or a game days and weeks later. And that the art of letting go, it's not really an art, it's a skill set that we can teach. We can teach referees how to get let go of those moments and those games with a healthy perspective. And sometimes we just have to let go of it and then we just find a way to move on. But that brings you to the second piece of this was okay, you've identified your triggers. Those are the things that set you off. You just mentioned one of them, which is ruminating, playing it over and over in your head. What were some of your responses? So after you're triggered, what's your go-to response?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so there's another entire sheet that kind of walks through emotional reactions, cognitive mental. I just want to say the thing on the pitch when someone says to me or has said to me, you lost the game, what I'm most embarrassed about is my behavior. Because again, I'm over 50 years old, right? So I'm a senior referee out there who's been doing this for 11 years. You know, I should not respond to a coach. Even if it's even if I'm I'm relatively calm, okay, it's a bad example for my assistant referees who are with me to be like, is this how I'm supposed to react when someone says something? So the Yeah, but you're a you're a human being though, too.
SPEAKER_02:You know, it's okay to be impacted by that. And I think one way that you could use that as a good learning moment, too, is to own that piece and say, listen, as I'm talking about this out loud, I'm just realizing that I'm not really dealing with this in a healthy way. I I wish I was a little bit better than that. And if we show that sort of improvement, like continuous process, listen, we do that at the professional level too. We're some of the best students of the game and we're elite, but all of us are lifelong learners and we're really committed to making sure we do better. And I think it's a healthy opportunity for you as an administrator to normalize that experience and then model, okay, I'm really still struggling with this, and that's okay. I know this isn't a great thing about me, and I'm really actively working to improve my responses in these kind of situations.
SPEAKER_00:I gotta tell you, I love that you put all these things into black and white, like into words here. It's so amazing. Because honestly, reading through this, like all of these things are things that I felt through my time. I listed off the ones that were the biggest, the top three, but again, the emotional reactions. And I'm gonna say these words, and every referee listening to this podcast is gonna have felt this at some time. Anger, embarrassment, humiliation, resentment, rage, anxiety, fear, insecurity, feeling disrespected, feeling inadequate, shame, frustration, powerlessness, feeling attacked, feeling a little, and disappointment itself. Man, those are the two biggest emotional responses for me by far.
SPEAKER_02:They're real and they're powerful. They tap into something really deep. And that's not just about refereeing my guests as a counselor. I think there's probably a lot more to that underneath the surface, but it comes to the surface when someone is attacking it and then we come undone. It's normal. It happens to all of us. It happens to professional referees as well. But we've all been through them. And it doesn't matter how old you are, how long you've been doing this, it still can sometimes really impact you, even as professionals.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's amazing. The next one you talk about the mental reactions, obsessing over the moment. Ding ding. Mentally replaying what was said of. I think everyone does that in every walk of life, losing concentration on the game, which is oh my gosh, cardinal sin. Tunnel vision, vengeful thoughts, internal trash talk. I suck or I'm not good. My gosh, doubting self-worth, trying to prove something, catastrophizing. If I mess this up, I'm done. Forgetting protocol, mechanics, overthinking simple decisions, black and white thinking, they're against me, blaming the players, coaches, wanting to quit, losing track of the match, the score of the time, which man, that has that happens when we get upset. But I think these are really interesting. How you've gone from okay, you have an emotional reaction, so you're triggered.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Can you talk a little bit about that?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think the real skill is shortcutting the process that we naturally want to go into. When we identify the triggers and we're aware of them, they lose their power. And then once we own our default responses and we have to acknowledge that, okay, these are not healthy. These are not good for me. I don't want to be this way. We have to own that. And we have to know what our go-to responses are. And once we know what the default sort of reaction is, we can choose an intentionally different response. And then we can practice that. We can practice being triggered. We can practice our rehearsed responses. One of the things that I do with this exercise is we do the triggers, we do the default responses, and then we actually practice in the moment. So what we did is we had referees partner off. They gave their partner permission to try to attack them with their triggers. So for me, when I was a young referee, it was my acne. And if I were doing this exercise, I would give you permission to attack me about my acne. And then I would practice taking a deep breath. And then I'm using my breath to center myself. It's a three-word acronym. It's acknowledge, right? Oh, I'm triggered. Then I do things with my body and my breath to center myself, gather my composure, and then I dress it, and then I find a way to transition out of that to make sure that I'm not restarting the game while I'm still dealing with that stuff. I have to create that little bit of space between my reaction and then moving on to the game. And so we have these referees trigger each other intentionally and yell at each other, acting like the coach. And then the referees practice owning it, accepting it, centering themselves, and finding a way to transition out of that using their breath and then using some positive self-talk and some mantras, things that we can use to bring us forward with positivity and poise. So that's our best friend.
SPEAKER_00:Kevin, I feel the cortisol in my chest. Yeah. Just talking about this. I'm I'm not kidding. Like I really honestly don't know what's the mod. I'm an emotional person. So again, when I feel attacked again about my credibility or feeling inadequate, man, it hurts deep at my core. And so going through these exercises to talk about it, to become self-aware and unknowing what triggers me and what has triggered me in the past. And again, taking that deep breath and learning how to and role-playing through how I might address it next time so that you've lived it, you've simulated it, and you're you can add and you can deal with it positively going forward. As opposed to letting the situation own you, you're gonna own the situation with composure. I love that, man. Oh, yeah. Deep breaths, deep breaths.
SPEAKER_02:Breath is always with us, man. It's our best friend. We just have to know how to use it with intentionality and know what we can be doing with our body and our breath to help us move on to the next phase and to the next moment without it, without bringing all that stuff into the next piece. And when we compound our mistakes by, we've got to create that space for ourselves, and that that breath is what helps us do it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and gosh, it need no look any further than any athlete before they're taking a foul shot in basketball, a penalty kick in soccer, you know, whatever they're doing, they are taking a deep breath. A T shot at the Masters, whatnot, it is a deep breath. It's a cleansing moment, and then they're moving forward. Once they've centered themselves, I was just watching a wonderful clip the other day where this ref was there was a very intense situation and they were being crowded, and they intentionally walked back, walking back almost like 10 yards to try and just get the one person they wanted to have the conversation with and kept everyone else back. And you could see it.
SPEAKER_02:You could see them sort of yeah, and that's what we teach in that sort of transition piece. Once you arrive, you plant yourself. You plant your feet, you take up space. I teach power posing, right? Shoulders back, chin up, you take a bit of a peacocking thing. Yes. And then we take a deep breath and then we engage with the conflict. Because if we just come in guns ablazing, then we're already at a disadvantage. We have to be composed, we have to be in control of ourselves before we can work our way out of that. So there's a lot of teachable moments, but if if you haven't been taught that or you don't have that sort of experience just organically in your life, you professionally have a lot of that experience. But to a 17-year-old kid, not most of them are not getting that sort of natural. So we have to teach it. And I think that's the niche that I'm trying to tap into.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, a thousand percent, man. Let me tell you, I'm hiring you at SoCal Socceral Patrick. Before MLS gets crazy in the whole season, I'm hiring you to come talk to our refs. But the next section was behavioral reactions. I circled three in here, okay? And these were earlier on in my ref career, but behavioral reactions are stealing focus, over talking, yelling unnecessarily, crying, yelling back at players or coaches. And I'm gonna add, and you do talk turning talking to fans or spectators, right? Yes, I I've done that.
SPEAKER_02:That's one of my stories. I'm not proud of it. I did that in a professional match and I'm not proud of it. You know what I mean? Like and I allowed them to hijack my focus. And in that moment, I'm like, what am I doing? We can't allow that, especially at my level. We can't allow that, but at anyone's level, if we allow someone to steal that focus, hijack it, then they've got the power. We let them win.
SPEAKER_00:And it is an assistant referee. And again, your specialty is assist a referee at the professional level, right? You might only be five feet, seven feet, ten feet from the fans, thousands of fans who could be very upset at your decisions and yelling and screaming and saying all sorts of things. So it's the natural reaction is to react to it, right? And it's a you have to almost train yourself. Oh, yeah. Okay, they have now the cams, like the ref cam for the center referee. I hope they start giving it to you as an assistant referee and people can hear the crowd noise that you guys are experiencing on the sidelines. I don't know if that's in their plans, but man, that would be interesting.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you would probably have to be bleeping it out so many times it wouldn't really be good audio because some of our supporter groups research us ahead of time. So, like when you talk about people being skilled at finding your weakness, man, there are some really clever people out there that really can go searching for your vulnerabilities.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, a thousand percent, a thousand percent. Oh my gosh, all right. Ignoring legitimate fouls to punish a team. Like if someone's giving you abuse, whatnot, maybe you'll ignore a foul or something, holding a grudge throughout the match, confrontational body language, avoiding communication altogether, like no longer talk to anyone, will not explain any decision, speeding up restarts to avoid dealing with conflict, becoming overly technical, robotic, swearing either internally or out loud, not using your whistle with confidence, rushing decisions, making decisions out of spite. My gosh, I will tell you, I'm just gonna openly admit we're all in the trust tree here. This is a safe space. Safe space. Although I've never done it, there's a little piece of me who like if someone like a coach is being a just a dick, let's just call it like it is. They're being rude, they're engaging in dissent. Is it a card? Is it not a card? But they're just whining and just being a brat on the sidelines. And a piece of you, a piece of you is man, I hope things don't go their way today. Or gosh, they're asking for these certain calls or being whining, dissenting about these certain calls. Maybe I shouldn't call these things just a spite of them. I'm not saying I'd do it, but there's part of you that wants to.
SPEAKER_02:Let's try it. I think there's power in acknowledging that. I mean, there's humanness there, and we're not robots. Just because we've been doing this for a long time and we've got thick skin, we are human beings. But there's also ways that we can prepare ourselves a little bit better for that kind of stuff. One of the skills that I teach too is an exercise where we have our referee jerseys, and if we can picture people screaming at our jerseys, and they are screaming and they're dissenting and treating that person really poorly. When we take that jersey off and we put it on the chair next to us, and then we visualize people still screaming at that jersey, but we're not wearing it anymore, I think that helps compartmentalize and own the fact that people are angry at the role that we're playing. People are angry that we've impacted their team and their reception. They are not angry at Kevin. They're angry at referee. And so when I take that jersey off and I put it on the chair beside me, I should also then allow the anger to stay with the jersey, the dissent to stay with the jersey, those personal insults that went at the jersey. I can choose to allow that emotionality to stay with the jersey rather than take it home to Kevin and my wife, my family.
SPEAKER_00:Honestly, I just it's really powerful. Again, I've said it so many times. They're not angry at you, they're angry at the ref. It's not David Gerson, they're upset at the referee for whatever they feel injustice has happened. But that's it's a skill to learn how to do that without a doubt. The last ones on here were body-based reactions, increased heart rate, which I think is one that I see. The more challenging matches, even if I'm not necessarily running further in those matches, if I do five or six miles, but it's an easy match, okay. Heart rate might be for me, I'm not the crazy fitness like you are, it might be 140, 150 or something like that. But if it's a really intense match, you might see my heart rate 160, 170. Hopefully, not the average. I don't want to die out there. But those emotional situations where you've got more descent, you've got harder tackles coming in, you've got more player management, the heart rate goes up. Some of the other ones, shaking, your hand shaking, shallow breathing, muscle tightness, your jaw, shoulders, your fists, fidgeting, setting posture change where you're slumping or puffing up, facial tension, flushed your red face, sweaty palms, feeling paralyzed or frozen.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And they come out in different ways for different people. But I think when you read those lists, I think there's probably a lot of referees who be like, oh, yep, that one for me. Oh, I've seen that in my buddy. Oh, yep, I saw that last weekend. And that's part of this exercise, too, is to normalize the experience that we are all going to have reaction. And they're not flaws. These are not things that are wrong with you. These are not problems that we need to fix. These are the humanness of the job that we've chosen to undertake. And let's be honest, it's a really challenging job. We burn out. And that's probably one of the problems with the retention is that our young referees, we're losing them between year one and two. I think there's a large chunk of that is because they don't have these skills to deal with that stuff. Once they get past year three and they have that hardened skin or they've learned skills to deal with it better, if we can get them past the year three, we're gonna have them for a decade, most likely. But if we don't teach those skills early enough, we lose them because for most people, it's just not worth it to deal with the abuse and the dissent and all of the anger and vitriol that we've talked about today.
SPEAKER_00:A thousand percent. I could not agree with you more. Yes, there's some fundamental skills that people need to feel like they know what they're doing out there. And that helps, right? If they have confidence that they're doing a good job and getting them feedback from a mentor, hey, you're on the right path. But my gosh, right along with that is everything you're talking about. It's that the mental side of it, the emotional maturity and awareness and being aware of your reactions and how it might manifest in these different ways. And that's normal that every referee has gone through this at some point in life, normalizing it, talking about these things. The history of referees in media, and I'm just saying, like out off the pitch is the strong silent type. They don't talk about weakness, they don't talk about emotional reaction, they don't talk about mental illness, anxiety. We gotta stop that.
SPEAKER_02:We've gotta end that. I think we've been better about that probably in the last decade or so, where like it's okay to talk about mental health, and that's a really positive cultural shift. Because you're right. They they sort of prided ourselves about being like impenetrable and just immovable in the face of adversity. Yeah, there's times that we have to present as that. But I think most referees would be lying if they uh said they always felt immune to that stuff. Conversations and to be teaching these skills. I'm grateful to be living in a time where this message resonates with people.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. And again, the negative feedback when you talk about is oh, referees are soft snakes. So they go through the same type of emotions that everyone else does. Whether you're a police officer, whether you're a waiter at a restaurant, whether you're an accountant and someone from another department says something nasty, or your supervisor says something to you, if your wife or spouse or kids or like your family member says something. We all go through these emotions. We have a unique set of circumstances that we face on the pitch. And what you're talking about is being aware of them and learning how to manage them if they do happen, or if you feel it happening, how to potentially respond to those situations and own it, as you said. Own the reaction, which I think is so cool.
SPEAKER_02:I think we have to expect it. That's part of what we signed up for. It's the real challenge of officiating, but there's also an incredible payoff at the end of it when we do persevere, when we have that resilience, when we have that grit. But if we're not teaching those things, then we're probably losing a lot of people who don't have that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. What would be one habit or mindset that you see in elite officials? The top of the top. You're the top 0.0001% of referees in our country. When you we talked about elite officials, you know, the international referees as well. What is that one habit or mindset that you see in that group that grassroots officials can start working on immediately to help them with grassroots, but also if they want to potentially get to that elite level? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I just came back from pro preseason camp. And one of the things that I think about when you ask that question is every single referee in that room is sitting there with their notebook and they're taking notes. And we have literally World Cup final referees sitting in the room with us. They are continuous, intentional, lifelong learners, right? They have a process, they have routines where they are continually self-improving. They take notes, they seek feedback really intentionally. I gotta admit, it's pretty cool sitting in some of those rooms because even the World Cup referees, they invite challenges to what they think and their opinions. And it's a really honest, collaborative environment that they can challenge each other to think differently, to have different perspectives. And so that self-improvement, that commitment is something I see in elite referees. And I think it's something that younger referees can do. One of the things that I found early in my career is that when I would go do a game and I knew I was a decent referee. And I would do a game, and then after the match, I'd ask my partners, hey, what's something I could have done differently today, or what's something I could have improved? And a lot of the time my partners would be like, oh no, man, you did a good job. Like you nice job today. Better. Like, give me, give me something. And what I realized is that it it wasn't because they didn't want to help me try to get better. It's that they either didn't have the knowledge to really find those pointed things. But I ended up changing my perspective after one of my partners said, Man, I wish you would have told me that ahead of time and I would have like really been like looking for to make you improve. And I said, Huh. And so what I did is I switched it. So before my games now, even to this day, when I'm refereeing games, if I'm doing like a high school or college game, I'll tell my partners before the game, I want you to find one thing today that you wish I would have done differently. And at the end of the game, I want you to tell me what exactly. Exactly, that situation was and what you maybe would have wished for me to do, or options, or just say, hey, that didn't really land well. Could you have found a different solution there? When we sort of prime people to love solving problems. And so if we give the brain a task to say, hey, go look for something that Kevin can improve, people will find it. Especially with US officials, we're really intentional about having honest and really straightforward conversations about improving each other after the game. If we ask people to do that ahead of time, they're going to give us really targeted and helpful feedback on the back end. So that's something that I think young referees can do. It's having a process of how do you learn? Are you doing a journal? Are you taking notes? Are you writing it down on your phone somehow? Find a process that works for you, that you can track that over time. And that's one of the things that I've done at U.S. officials for our feedback forms. I know I was listening to your podcast with the referee advocates. Shout out to them. They're awesome. Talking about the development of feedback forms. And that's one of my projects right now that I'm piloting at our next event is a feedback form that we can use with our partners. We can use it with ourselves as a self-reflection exercise. The coaches can use it. When we have those diversity of perspectives, I think there's usually really good feedback in there. So that's one of my projects of finding better ways to solicit that feedback and then to be able to track it over time, be able to see growth, be able to see improvement, be able to remember specific events from that game. Because when you go into a tournament and you do three games at a weekend, if I or three games in a day, if I ask you something you learned from the first game, like it's gone, unless you wrote it down. I think we have to be better at that and give people a system that if you don't have a default routine already built in, try this. Maybe that'll work. And then we can track it over time and we can ask the right questions and capture that that growth over your career or over a season or over an event.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I can't wait to work a U.S. officials event now. I need to look at it. I live in Atlanta. I work in California. So I travel to California like every month, once or twice a month, but I definitely Florida, Orlando, easy for me to drive on down to. I got events I can go to, definitely. Great. We'd love to have you. So we I got a few last questions I'm gonna let you go. Looking for quick, just off the top of the head, like responses on this one. Ready, brother? If there was one law of the game you could change tomorrow, what would it be and why? One law of the game change. Why do we do that? Why is it like that? Anything like that.
SPEAKER_02:Man, I think for laws of the game, off the top of my head, the laws of the game that I would change. One of the things that we've started talking about is these captains getting sort of special treatment to come and talk to the referee. And I understand the reason for that because we don't want like the mobbing and stuff. I think a lot of the captains that that we experience, or at least I see out on fields, they're coming, they're the worst offenders a lot of time. I mean, like, no, no offense to captains, but sometimes they're the last person that I want to help me, or sometimes they're not even capable of helping me. I actually want to talk to the real leader on the team, who maybe isn't the most skilled one, but they're more likely to actually help me. That is so funny. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Like Bruno Fernandez on Manchester United, I'm a United fan. Like, he is the most over-the-top emotional person like on the entire squad, always whining for the most ridiculous calls. I don't want to have a conversation with him. Find me the rational person.
SPEAKER_02:The guy can actually talk to him, talk like a human being.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's a great point. I love that one. Okay, what's something in your referee bag that would surprise most people?
SPEAKER_02:I'm gonna get some stick for that one. I'm gonna be honest. Safe space. Now, this is not safe because people are gonna come after me. One, I have a stick of sunscreen that I use, and but I don't use it to like block from the sun. I use it to cover my eyebrows. I use sunscreen and a stick, and I sweat a ton. If you ever see me do a game, I am sweating more than the players most of the time. I don't know rather than me having to wipe my eyes all the time.
SPEAKER_00:Very okay here. I need to ask another question. Can you just go straight across your head with it?
SPEAKER_02:You can go straight across the head, and that comes to maybe like the top of my ear. Yeah, we got we got it from boxing. Otherwise, boxers who sweat a ton, they'd be wiping themselves all the time. It's and it goes out to the side. So when you watch me do a professional game, you will never see me wiping my eyes because if I do that, I'm wiping away the thing that is protecting the sweat from the body.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, I gotta tell you, I thought that the, and maybe part of the Vaseline thing is they want the gloves to slide off of their face, but I didn't know it also had the extra benefit of keeping the sweat out of your eyes, which, yeah, dude, I'm a sweater. And I live in Georgia. And I referee on turf where it's you know 95 degree air temperature, 140 on the turf or whatever, it's awful. So I am taking that one. I love that. All right, and next one for you. Do you have any pregame superstition or ritual?
SPEAKER_02:I don't have superstitions. One of the things that I am very intentional about my routine, so it's just maybe just a slight nuance change. I think for me, the difference is if you don't do a superstition or a ritual, you might have the belief that might have a negative impact on the game. And so I change it to be a routine where there are things that I do that help uh prepare for matches. Um, for me, it starts with mental preparation and and physical preparation. When I'm in the city getting ready for a game, I'm memorizing players' names of the lineups that I expect. I'm doing some visualization exercises. I when I'm sitting in the locker room and we are just getting done our physical warm-up, I have offside clips on my phone that I go through. It's me priming my brain, warming up the tires on a NASCAR, right? You have to warm it up so I'm speeding up my brain to process it and to be see as many offside decisions as I can because on our physical warm-up, we're that's not really happening. Yeah. I try to prime my brain as much as possible. And I'm doing that with a couple different intentional points in my day leading up to a match.
SPEAKER_00:I love that. All right, just a couple last ones here. So this is so much fun. We talked about the fans earlier. Most memorable or bizarre thing you've ever heard someone yell at you from the stands, from the sidelines. Bizarre?
SPEAKER_02:Could you share one that like really it like impacted me? And part of my reaction was like, oh, that's clever, but all right. The situation the situation, it was an actual, it was a ball boy, uh, which kind of rubbed me the wrong way. The ball boys were going at me about being bald, and that's actually one of the things that I'm sensitive about now as an adult. And he said, Hey, ref, hold on, let me get that, let me get the line right because it was clever. Did you go bald before refereeing, or did referee make you bald? So, yeah, a shout out to that guy. I hope you're never my ball boy again.
SPEAKER_00:I'm telling you, I had a middle school game. Middle school soccer is like the worst soccer on the face of the earth. It's like literally, and again, not that it's bad, like it should be a great experience. Again, coaches and parents can turn it into something it should just be about fun and participation. Yeah. But it actually, funny enough, because you're an assistant referee. So it's a dual system, and I am like all the way up at half uh the halfway line, and a a ball is kicked long ball. Someone somehow someone kicked the ball long, which is usually not something that happens in middle school, but someone kicks the ball long, and there was an attacking player about 10 feet on the attacking half of halfway. Okay. And I didn't see anyone else. I saw the defenders like chasing after him, running after him. So I'm like, oh, he's in an offside position and raise my arm, blow the whistle. Again, we don't have a flag in a duel, whatnot. And I'm like, offside. And the kid behind me, 10-year-old kid sitting in the bleachers, yells, How much is the other team paying you? And I'm like, Are you kidding me? Dude, you're like 10 years old. There was another defender standing having a conversation with the goalkeeper, like on the goal line. So I totally messed up the call. They noticed it, but I didn't notice it right at that moment. When I turned back around, I'm like, oh but I just thought I was like, Are you serious, dude? Dude, you're 10, man. You're 10, dude. Settle down. My guy.
SPEAKER_02:I I work with kids every day in my counseling life. Kids can be savage, man.
SPEAKER_00:What's the worst advice you ever got as a referee? Maybe from someone who was trying to be a mentor or a fellow referee. What's the worst advice you ever got? There's something you're like, really?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I've done such a good job of trying to let that stuff go and of letting that stuff go. I think it's really easy for us to say, just get over it. Uh that's not how we work. We don't just pretend like things didn't happen. We work through that by going back to my account. We work through it by acknowledging and owning that piece of ourselves. We often can't just get over things. We have to work through things to really come out the other side a better person. If we just get over it, really probably what we're doing is either repressing it, pushing it down, or pretending like it doesn't impact us and not really actually dealing with the underlying feelings. So yeah, don't just get over it. You gotta go through it sometimes.
SPEAKER_00:I love it, man. My gosh, Kevin, I am I am not kidding when I say this is one of my favorite podcast interviews I've ever done. I am so excited. This is not our last time working together. I'm hiring you. Trust me, I'm gonna be literally my next email to you when I get done with uh dinner with the family and whatnot is, hey, give me your dates available, tell me your rates, I gotta hire you that makes or breaks referees. And again, like you said, understand your triggers, understand your reactions to those triggers, and then think about how you want to respond or how you will respond. If this does happen to you in the future, you're gonna be really well set to manage through some of the most difficult things any referee could possibly do. Right. All right, Kevin, tell people how they get in touch with you, either through your organization that you've set up to start doing this personal coaching or through U.S. officials. If they want to be working matches with you guys and get this great education you're doing, how do people reach out?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so if you want to be part of the US officials, it's Usofficials.com and it's US officials and all the socials, not to be confused with US soccer. I got this. I do love that I got this job, but it is not US soccer, it is USofficials.com and on all the socials. And then my company is officialsmentaledge.com and it's officials mental edge on all the socials. So love for people to follow along, see the content, and grow in the community where we can help make better people and better referees along the way.
SPEAKER_00:Amen, my brother. Yes, everyone out there, please give a follow to Kevin, support him in this journey. Let's refer him to every association you're a part of, your high school association, your local state association, anyone you know who could benefit from this conversation, please help him out. He's just set up this business. He's obviously doing phenomenal work. I'll tell you, I am emotionally changed after this conversation, and I'm looking forward to hiring Kevin too. So let's definitely support him and his work. Kevin, thank you so much for being on the pod today. Sincerely, I appreciate it. It's been my pleasure. My gosh, I hope all of you guys out there enjoyed this conversation as much as I have. I'm gonna be definitely posting little reels of this. Please share them with your organization. Repos, share, share them to your story. And I think everyone needs to be hearing these messages. Definitely reach out to Kevin as well. My gosh, you know how to reach him. Tell him, share your story. I'm sure he wants to hear from you too, and what this conversation meant to you and how it might have made you feel as well, and how you might change going forward after this conversation. Guys, please, always a reminder: support the refsneedlove2.com online store. The proceeds from that store help pay for me to be able to have this podcast and the lights that are around me and the microphone I'm speaking into and all that stuff, man. All these things cost money. Please help support the store so I can help support you. I love you guys. And as always, I hope your next match is red card free.