Update! Bouncing Back After A Mistake

A single referee mistake can hijack your confidence for days, especially when it happens in a high school playoff match with a crowd watching. I share a raw update on a procedural error I had to admit publicly, including the moment I took a go-ahead goal off the board and how heavy that felt after the final whistle. If you’ve ever walked to your car replaying one decision on repeat, you’ll recognize the mix of pride, guilt, and the need to keep showing up anyway. 

From there, we pivot to the quick reset that every soccer referee needs: an easy assistant referee night that still had its own challenge (yes, you can get cooked by the sun even at a “night” game). Then we get into a competitive Georgia high school soccer matchup between 6A teams where game management matters on every touch. We talk injuries, five yellow cards, delays of restart, reckless challenges, and how using comms with a strong crew helps us spot flashpoints and keep players from boiling over. 

We close with the small details that make officials better: smarter positioning on goal kicks, opening your body to read the long ball, and why over-apologizing (“I’m sorry”) can actually make dissent worse. There’s also a quick referee gear update with new referee socks and the latest on grip socks restocking and why they sell out so fast. If this helped you, subscribe, share it with a ref friend, and leave a review so more officials can find it.

Transcript

Easy Assist And Sun Trouble

High Stakes 6A Match Management

Postgame Feedback On Positioning

New Ref Socks And Stock Update

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hey guys, real quick update for you guys. So it is now Saturday afternoon, and I had that really rough match on Wednesday night where I made an error and had to swallow my pride and admit in front of a couple hundred people that I made a big error and take a goal off the board that would have been a go-ahead goal for a team that was down to 10 men in a state high school playoff match. So big error, my fault, had to admit it, and they wound up losing the game. So that made it even more painful for them and for me as well. The soccer gods were not kind on that evening. But I had another game on Thursday night where I was an assistant referee. Piece of cake, very easy match, wound up being 7-0. The most difficult part of the match is that the position of the AR2 in that game was staring directly into the sun. So even though the game didn't kick off until 6 p.m. the next morning, it's like, my gosh, you got a lot of sun last night. It's like, how do you get like sunburn on a night game? Well, if you're staring into the sun for 80 minutes, it happens. So that happened. And then last night, Friday night, I had the whistle again for a very, very competitive. The way we do rankings in Georgia for the high schools, the smallest schools would be a 1A, and the largest schools are a 7A. These were two 6A teams, a two-seed and a three-seed, that were competing. And it was a tough match. One team was definitely had higher skill players, and it was pretty much known coming to the match. This was going to be a really difficult match. Well, that team wound up going up 3-0 in the first half and deserved it. Plenty of scoring opportunities, very skilled players, great dribblers of the ball, real close control. It was impressive. And the home team was struggling to get out of their own half, was struggling to have any possession at all. And I thought I did a really good job managing it. I was working hard out there. I actually covered 6.19 miles last night in my high school match. There were a lot of injuries in that match. We had five yellow cards in that match. I had to do a lot of game management. I had a delay of restart. I think I had two delays of restart in that match with people kicking the ball away for no good reason. I had three reckless challenges there. I think maybe one of them might have been spa. A lot of hard work. Halftime, we go into the locker room with my crew, and the only thing we had to talk about was hey, let's keep an eye on these guys. We've got some players who are going to be playing their last high school match ever. And let's keep an eye on the people who are losing their cool and losing their composure. Let's talk. If you see something, say something. We were using comms last night. So I had a great experience crew with me who was giving me constant feedback about where there might be flashpoints or things happening off the ball, which was fantastic. Second half, that home team came out fired up, and they were giving everything they could, going after every single loose ball, chasing every single thing down, much more pressure, and they wound up earning a penalty. And so the game went 3-1 and it was tight the entire rest of the way. Absolutely lots of emotions, people upset pretty much on every single call. It was more through just so much intensity was going into every single challenge that sometimes there was just too much force involved. Sometimes they were tripping them, even though they might have got the ball, they still cleared out their legs in the process. So it was a challenging match, but it was a fair match, and I felt like I did a really good job. So after that awful experience Wednesday night, where I really felt like I let the teams down by making that procedural error. On Friday night, I feel like I redeemed myself. I feel like I gave a great effort. I feel like it was a fair result. I feel like I got all my key match incidents correct. Uh the only feedback I got from my crew at the end of the match was number one, maybe different positioning to take up on goal kicks, because I was very central into the field and the ball kept coming long towards the center of the field, and then I'd have to scramble and take up another position, just try and learn from that and take up a better position, opening up my body a little bit more. Great feedback. And then also then I'm prone to say, hey, I'm sorry. Say I'm sorry a lot. If someone's upset about a call, I'm just like, hey, sorry, man. This is what I saw. Or I'm sorry. Hey, he stepped on his foot. Hey, yeah, I'm sorry. It's like they're like, stop saying I'm sorry. You're saying it too much, you're overusing the phrase. You don't need to apologize for making a call. Just make the call, which I think is great feedback, and I can take that and move forward well. But again, just wanted to let you guys know that's what's going on. Today I'm here at the house, very busy, extremely busy. I've got new products going on to the website today. I did get some new fun socks. So new, fun, cool referee socks, brand new designs, assistant referee and referee socks just in time for Mother's Day or Father's Day. Check them out. And then, yes, every single day I keep getting asked about the grip socks. When are they gonna be back in stock? When are they gonna be back in stock? I hopefully should have them this week. I'm just gonna tell you though, I have three bulk orders that are waiting for that stock to come in. So as soon as it comes in, I'm probably gonna be out of stock again. I'm so sorry. So if you see them, go onto the website, you're seeing on social media, get them while you can. Uh, because this next big bulk shipment that comes in, I've got two big orders coming. Once that comes in, I'm not gonna have any more stock until probably after Father's Day. It just takes eight weeks from the time I place my order to the time I get more stock in, and the demand has been through the roof. So thank you so much for your support. Thank you for your emails. People have sent me messages about their worst game ever or just commiserating after a bad match. Thank you so much for reaching out to me. I love you all, and make your next match be Red Card Pro.