My daughter's U13 team is playing in a tournament this weekend. Statewide tournament, all top travel teams. 1st game, played a previously unbeaten team and were kicking their ass. That team was dirty AF, official is horrible (yelling at coaches, players, spectators). My daughter gets tripped, hits her head. Starts to get up, gets kicked in the ribs. Honestly, both were unintentional, but the kick to the ribs put her back down. Ref stops play. Coach comes out, tends to her.

As she gets up and starts to walk off with her coach, the other team (without a signal from the ref) puts the ball in play. My daughter is 15 [censored] feet onto the field at this point, still walking off very slowly. She gets drilled with the ball. I lose my [censored]. Ref blows the whistle, says/does nothing to the other coach or their players, threatens to have me ejected from the premises and arrested. After the game, our coach demands an explanation and the ref says "I never told them to start play, it's not my fault she got hit." Why no card, etc. for the other team's coach for doing it? "He said he heard a whistle." Yeah...the field we were on was 500 feet away from the next nearest field in use at the time, so no way was this a case of a whistle on another field being mistaken for a whistle from our official. Thankfully, my daughter is OK. The father of one of our girls is a doc, checked her for a concussion, no issues. Ribs are bruised/sore, but otherwise OK. She's more pissed about being hit with the ball than anything else.

Same ref officiated our next game a few hours later (which we also won), and officiated much differently. Called the game a lot closer, didn't let it get out of hand. Still did a [censored] job, but a differently [censored] job. At least in the 2nd game, he fulfilled his primary responsibility, which is to protect the players. As we walked away with the other team's parents after that game, they commented that he lives in their town, that some of their kids play soccer with his son, and they think he's a [censored] official and a [censored] person, too.

I can't [censored] stand these youth sports coaches who enable and encourage dirty play. I also know officiating youth sports is hard, but if you're not going to prevent that kind of play, then don't [censored] officiate youth sports. Miss a call? Ok, that happens. Let the game get out of hand physically? STFU when parents/coaches call you out on it. These parents were ridiculous, too. Cussing us out, calling our girls crybabies, etc. If you go to a youth sporting event, you don't say a [censored] word to players on the other team unless it is to compliment them for a nice play, wish them good luck, congratulate them. Otherwise, not a [censored] word. People like this ruin youth sports. Bunch of frustrated fatties who either never played, or were 3rd string JV as a senior in high school and are trying to get out their frustrations through kids.