Columbus Soccer Ref

For a long time, I’ve been thinking about the mentoring of soccer officials. While I think it’s particularly important for the young and new referees, I also find myself (as a Grade 7 with many years of experience) wishing there was someone with more experience who would provide feedback, answer questions, and provide guidance on a semi-regular basis. I know USSF is trying to make assessors and assessments much less adversarial, and I’m already on the list for the next assessor’s course, but there are never enough assessors to go around. And ideally, I’d like my mentor to be available by phone or e-mail just to “talk shop” about refereeing once in a while.

But I think mentoring is especially crucial for the young and new referees. I think most everyone can agree that the Entry Level Referee Course that everyone takes when they first become a referee is merely a primer to the laws of the game. I really don’t think it does a very good job at teaching someone how to actually be a referee - and all the things that go with it, like foul recognition, dealing with assignors, coaches, players, fans, and such. I feel like a new referee leaves the entry level course with a decent knowledge of the LoTG, but ill-equipped to do matches. I really think a mentoring program would not only better equip new referees to handle matches, thereby improving the retention of new referees, but it should also improve the professionalism of referees as a whole as the new referees are provided with good examples from mentors. And when that happens, the level of referees as a whole will improve.

I think for a mentoring program to work, there has to be some pieces in place -
1 - Buy-in from the assignor
2 - A group of senior referees who are willing to take a new referee under their wing.
3 - Young/new referees who are interested in taking refereeing seriously.

I’ve been tossing around some ideas in my head, but they’re still sort of raw. I think the primary goals of the mentoring program would be to improve year-over-year referee retention and to improve the overall quality of officiating. My ideas go something like this. . .get a group of senior referees and assign them two new referees to mentor. The assignor would then allow the mentor and his charges to work as a crew for several matches, with the mentor providing regular feedback and guidance to the new referees. The crew would be responsible for splitting up the middles and AR assignments - none of this “I only do ARs” or “I’m taking all the middles”. The assignor and mentor would work together to make sure the new referees aren’t doing games above a level they’re ready for, but ensure that the new referees are progressing. All three officials would be formally assessed on a regular basis. This accomplishes a few things. First, it gets the new referees familiar with the assessment process. Second, if the mentor is doing what he is supposed to be doing, most of the assessor’s comments should be reinforcing what the mentor has been telling/showing his new referees. Third, assessors are in a good position to provide feedback to the assignor as to how well the mentoring program as a whole is working. And it should be scalable. . .the senior Grade 8s and the Grade 7s can mentor the brand new referees. . .and the Grade 5s and Grade 6s can mentor the Grade 7s. But I think it starts with the referees - if they want to take it seriously, I think senior referees, assignors, and assessors should do what we can to help.

Does anyone have a mentoring program going in their area? How does it work? How well does it work? Inquiring minds want to know.