officiating in all sports has gotten worse, IMO

not sure if it is in response to issues with parents/coaches/players complaining about calls or whatever, but there has been a noticeable drop in quality of officiating and a dramatic increase in confrontations started and escalated by officials.

Just in the past week, I've seen umpires staring down 14 year old boys who were just asking for clarification, umpires throwing a coach out for not properly requesting time out to speak to his pitcher, numerous poor strike/ball calls, clearly one sided calls to one team, etc. That's just baseball; football is worse, and basketball is about the same.

I think that there is just such a shortage of quality guys that they're hiring anyone and everyone to do the job and these guys aren't getting properly trained. You can have parents code of conduct as much as you want, but a poor official will escalate these situations and make things worse.

Agree

Twice this season, as a basketball coach, I had an official stop the game to run across the court to get in my face and start an argument. Both times there were no escalating factors prior. Once for me yelling, "10 seconds" after what should have been a violation and another for me yelling, "Stop, somebodies going to get hurt" as the ref tried to inbounds the ball 10 seconds after a blatant foul as my girl lay crying at the other end of the court.

Multiple other times I've witnessed referees instigating arguments with parents and other coaches.

I've vowed once my kids are older and I have the time, to come back and referee and turn over my pay to our youth league.

Good refs are invaluable. A couple years ago my son slammed

the ball after what he thought was a bad call. Not in a wind up and throw it manner but a hard two hand slam right back into his hands. The ref who did not make the call came over put his arm around his shoulder and walk him a few feet away and explained why he shouldn't do that and why he wouldn't be doing it again.

Could have called a T which would have hurt the team but handled it in a way that got the lesson thought to a 7th grader.

A good ref has a short memory and a thick skin. Too many show up with an attitude they are going to show who the boss is. Particularly in a community soccer league they should see themselves as part of the education of the game.

Curious on how others view this

I tend to agree with this poster that at youth levels Ref should be part of education of the game.

It mystifies me in U10 or U11 when the ref doesn’t explain to the players what’s happening. It takes forever for a corner kick or spot kick because the Ref signals and the kids have no idea what to do.

I get the kids need to learn the rules / signals, and the coaches need to devote some time...but at young ages I think the learning curve would improve if the Refs were encouraged to communicate more clearly and “teach” the rules.

That requires mentoring

And there just aren't enough referees to do it.

Part of the problem is that for every competition under USSF, if it's 7v7 or 9v9 it still requires 3 referees. Only 5v5 is 1.