Regional Referee Administrator:

Youth Referee Program - 2008 (Last updated 3/27/08 @ 10:00 PM)

We're looking for boys and girls 12 years and older who love soccer; playing it, watching it, whatever!!  Come and learn a new way to enjoy soccer. Learn to referee younger kids and help them enjoy soccer almost as much as you do!  Youth referees will be trained and will get to ref real games. This is a fun way to earn community service hours for your school while helping the younger kids enjoy the game.

Referee Clinic

The youth referees learn the same material as the adults. They will need to attend one of the Regional Referee Courses. At the end all new referees will be provided with all they need to begin refereeing; uniform, whistle etc... Contact if you have any questions or are interested in participating.

Mentoring

All youth referees will be mentored. At the start they will be working with at least one adult referee for every game. Youth referees start by being assitant referees (AYSO uses the diagonal system, one center referee with two assistant referees) for the first two or threegames with a senior referee doing the center. Eventualy we will have teams of three youths working sets of three games, with each one taking a turn at center. A fourth official (a senior referee) will be present at every game so that no team of youths will ever be asked to work a game without an adult present to support them. The youth referees will not be asked to deal with any coach or spectator problems. The fourth official will do that for them.

We will be emphasizing the "kids zone" this year, especially for the U10 division where most of the youths will be refereeing.

Scheduling

For those kids who will also be playing, we will take into account each kid's game schedule and place them with other kids who will be able to ref and not have conflicts with their own games.