The Pitch, November 2003 by Bill Briseno
Recently I received an email from Kurt asking me how he could advance and what all is involved in advancing. This email came about the same time that I was suffering from writers block on my next article. His email couldn’t have come at a better time. While the topic seemed easy, once I started to write it out I realized that there was more involved than I thought. So here goes.

Becoming a referee starts with attending a basic referee clinic for sixteen hours. In the clinic the potential referee learns about the field of play, the ball, players and their equipment, the all important offside, fouls and misconduct, penalty kicks, the powers and duties of the referee and assistant referee, dual system of control, and the difference between an indirect and direct free kicks. There is also a field session on positioning and mechanics as both a referee and assistant referee. While this seems like a lot of material, it is because there is more to just calling a foul and whether a goal is allowed or not.

At the end of the all this, the student takes a test and if he passes then he pays his money for registration and gets a badge. Now the new referee is contacted by an assignor for game assignments. The new grade 8 referees will usually start out by doing the younger age groups and then works his way up to the older age groups and more challenging games. Then when he feels he is ready for upgrade to grade 7, he contacts the State Director of Assessments. After the SDA receives his schedule of games and sends in his fees for assessments, an assessor is sent out to see how he performs on the pitch. In North Texas referees seeking advancement to grade 7 can be assessed on U19 recreational games as well as amateur games. The potential grade 7 also needs to attend an in-service clinic which is five hours long and he has to take a physical fitness test and pass it. And yes there is another written test that he has to take and pass. If all goes well and he passes the tests and assessments then his paperwork is submitted to the State Referee Administrator who makes sure all paperwork is in order and then presents the referee to the promotion committee who votes yes or no to promote. Now we have a new grade 7 referee.

But now if the referee wants to advance to a grade 6 the hard work begins.

The first step is attending an advancement clinic held each January. Here the referee will attend a weekend long clinic where he will take the state referee exam on Friday night and must pass it. Over the course of the weekend various instructors are brought in to present different advanced topics dealing with such things as how to handle persistent infringement, misconduct, more of the dreaded offside, what is expected of the referee both on and off the field, and tons of more information. During the weekend the referee will also have to take and pass another fitness test. Once the weekend is over the referee is now considered a state referee candidate and is ready to begin the assessment process. The referee will now have to send in his schedule to the State Director of Assessment and the appropriate fees. This is no different from what he did when he was trying to advance from a grade 8 to a grade 7 but the one major difference now is that the referee must have two assessments as a referee and one as an Assistant Referee. The assessments must be on U19 boys or girls Classic League games or women’s first division or men’s second division or over-30 men’s games. If he fails an assessment then he will have to have two assessments to make up the one failure and of course there are still fees involved for the extra games. The assessors sent out will be more critical than they were for the grade 7 assessments because now the referee will be working harder and more challenging games. At this level the referee should have good foul recognition and his fitness level should enable him to keep up with play for the entire 90 minutes and with this in mind the assessor assigned to the game will see how his man-management skills are. We all know that as players get older they develop more tricks to give them an advantage over their opponents and it will be up to the referee to see that the game is played fairly.

One thing that the potential grade 6 referee must keep in mind is that not every game that he is assessed on will count towards his 2+1 game count. Some games may not be competitive enough or challenging enough for the referee while in some games he may be missing an AR or a team doesn’t have enough players. Of course there is also the weather that doesn’t always cooperates and the referee must be ready for having games cancelled and rescheduled.
 

Once all the assessments have been done then the paperwork has to be submitted again to the SRA and if it is right then it is sent to the promotion committee again for a vote.

If the referee is promoted to grade 6 and wants to go for his grade 5, then the process is repeated again beginning with the advancement clinic except now the games must be in the men’s first division or above in order to qualify. And because of the number of referees wanting to be a grade 5 and the number grade 5’s needing these games for their maintenance, the competition for games becomes greater.

If a referee has aspirations of becoming a National Referee, the criteria becomes harder and the competition is even greater because he is not only competing against other referees in North Texas but referees across the country.

All this information can be found in the North Texas Referee Policy Manual which each referee receives at his first clinic and then again when he re-registers for the new soccer year.

So Kurt, in a nutshell this is how one advances up to a grade 5. I hope that this has helped and hope to see you at one of the in-service or advancement clinics.