My daughter and some of her teammates will play on the U13 boys travel team when they are short handed. OUr girls are usually the best players on the field when they do. They're also tougher than the boys.

That is sad... We used to mess around with scrimmaging 1 and 2 division up girls and run them ragged. They could be meaner than some of the boys, that's for sure.

Gone are the days of a mistimed slide tackle and nothing more than a direct free... now you get carded and gone. I might have lasted about 3 minutes in a game today. IMHO, the game is MUCH softer now than it was years ago. When someone flopped, you got plenty of opps to give them a real reason to flop. Floppers got abused and now they are rewarded. You could be really rough within the rules, not now.

Lots of physical play in travel and club, and no flopping with the girls. That's a guy thing. The girls are too tough for that.

No slide tackling in U13. I think that's allowed in U15. Heading the ball is allowed in U12 and up.

I can't say I'm surprised by your daughters experience on the pitch, but I'm happy for her (and you) that she has so many positive influences in her life. All experience is good experience. Her and her team mates will be better people for it.

This is the key take-away.

Three kids playing all levels of soccer (among other things) for 16 years. Probably 8 years of year-round play with one or more kids at any given time. Poor officiating, poor conduct by players, parents, coaches - on both sides of the ball. Seen just about everything. My kids are so much better for it. Great parent/child teaching/learning opportunities with my kids on nearly a daily basis. Sometimes we'd talk about soccer too.

My side hustle is a sports photographer. I mostly do high school level for a couple of public schools. I've probably shot close to 300 games now I've never seen coaches act unprofessionally, but damn, have I seen some parents act like complete door knobs. Yelling at kids and getting ejected from the game. There is a lot more accountability in high school sports due to the student's academic future being tied to their conduct, so I'm sure it's worse with travel teams. Last incident was a father circling the rink at a hockey game screaming at his kid. Ref had to stop play, eject the guy and threaten to involve police. It got worse when another parent felt the need to heckle the original guy creating the issue.

I can count on one hand though the times I've witnesses this kind of crap. It's rare in HS sports.

I saw refs eject 2 parents this weekend at various games during the tournament. I was threatened with it, but was not ejected, and I suspect that was because the ref realized what I was saying, and why, and he knew I was right. I had every reason to be pissed, and I'm not sorry I did it. I was yelling about my daughter getting hit with the ball as she walked off of the field injured. I've never yelled at an official before, and hopefully won't have reason to do so again. He'd lost complete control of the game by that point, which is dangerous and unacceptable.

Around here there is getting to be a serious shortage of referees/umpires.

The older guys are retiring and the younger guys have decided that the meager pay isn't worth all the verbal abuse they take mostly from parents, but also coaches and players. Way too much drama and emotion (and booze), wrapped up in a child's game that is supposed to be fun--and everyone expects perfection from officials who often are not much older than the players.

Even high school football has been forced to move games from Friday nights to Saturday mornings, or even cancel games altogether due to the shortage of referees.