Welcome to the Refs Need Love 2 podcast, a show that gives you a real, raw, and behind-the-scenes view of one of the hardest jobs on the pitch, the referee. I'm your host, David Gerson, a grassroots referee with seven years of experience and over 1,000 matches under my belt. You can find me at refsneedlove2.com and on TikTok under the same name. In today's episode, we'll be reviewing the advice from the newest top referee in the U.S., Mark Geiger.
He is the head of PRO, the Professional Referees Organization. He was an MLS ref for 14 years and did more international competitions than any U.S. ref ever. He provides six pieces of insight for inspiring referees. First and foremost, you gotta do games. And I can tell you, there is no... Better advice than that. You got to get out there. You have to see situations.
I had a young ref come up to me at the end of a game just this past weekend, and he was asking, you know, hey, I just got certified a few weeks ago. What should I do? I was like, oh, well, great. You need to start signing up for some recreational U8, U10, and U12 games, and that's what you need to do for the first year. Now, mind you, this kid is an MLS Academy player. He knows the game well. He's perfectly fit. He gets it. But he was nervous, you know, of getting started.
And I was just like, you just need reps. You just need to go out there and get comfortable in the referee jersey, you know, carrying around the referee whistle, dealing with players, even young players, dealing with coaches, dealing with spectators, and to hopefully do it in a low-charged environment. You gotta do this. games. For everyone, it can be a little different.
If you're coming into refereeing after a career of playing at a very high level, maybe you only need to do about 20 or 30 or 40 of those. But if you're a young kid, I mean, do the whole first year. Maybe it's 50, 70, 100 games. I'm not kidding. It takes time to be able to recognize what a foul is and what isn't when you're not actually the person getting fouled or doing the foul, when you're just watching it. Additionally, the position to be able to see the foul is really important.
To get comfortable with that whistle. What does that whistle sound like? Is it a short little simple foul are we stopping play for substitutions or is it a long hard blow you know to say this is a really serious foul so you learn those things over time doing games so that is the the first piece of advice go out and do some games the second thing is go outside of your comfort zone Now, whether you're working out and lifting weights or you're refereeing, it's the same thing.
When you challenge yourself, you get better. When you're working out, if the weight becomes too light, you need to start working out with heavier weights. That's the only way you're going to make gains. There's a great saying, if you're the smartest person in the room, you need to find another room. It's never good. You want to surround yourself with people who are better than you. You will learn.
You want to go, if you have aspirations for moving up, you want to try to move to the top level of competition that you can get into so that you can learn. Now, you're not going to be perfect. There's going to be challenges. It's going to be faster. It's going to be more intense. The pressure might be higher. The tackles are going to come in faster. The situations are going to be, you know, different than you've ever seen before, but that's good. That's how you learn. You learn through mistakes.
You learn through seeing new things. So it's really important that you kind of push yourself to that next level if that's where you want to go. Some people are perfectly happy just doing recreational games, doing five of those in a day, and making their money there. But if you want to move up, you've got to go outside your comfort zone and challenge yourself. That's absolutely critical.
Oftentimes for us referees, since we're independent contractors, it's just about finding out who the assigner is for those games in your area, reaching out to them, and asking for the assignment. People are usually so desperate for referees, man. A new ref comes along and says, hey, I want to do that game. They'll give it to them. I would just tell you, you know, Maybe if you're doing U12 rec, maybe not step up to an ECNL U18 for the step up.
You know, maybe go to, you know, a local, not local, but regional leagues like the NPL or DPL or something like that or GPL and do a couple games there. Make sure you feel comfortable. You know, maybe it's even 20 games, you know, for you to really feel comfortable at that level on the line in the center before you move up to that next level again. You got to do the games though and get outside your comfort zone.
The third thing, and this is so important for referees, and I've talked about this a number of times on my podcast, is coping with mistakes. You won't be perfect all of the time. And don't pretend like you are. I'm full of sayings, and one saying is, that I really love and I can't remember exactly. Oh, I do remember actually. This was a coach I worked with, an actual strengths coach, a personal strengths coach that I worked with.
And she said, if you act like you are infallible, like you can't make mistakes, if you act like you are infallible, people will do everything they can to fail you. If you act like you're fallible, meaning like you're not, You're not holier than thou. You know, if you have a little bit of humility to you, people will do everything they can to help you. And this is really important for referees.
When I ask players, you know, what is it they don't like about referees or coaches, they talk about someone who is humble. They talk about someone. This is a classic thing. They're making it all about them. You can't talk to them. You can't ask a question. Well, that's a problem. You're officiating that match. And sometimes people do have questions. And maybe it's a petulant thing such as like, how is that a foul? Well, you tripped them. How is that a foul? It was shoulder to shoulder.
Well, you can't put your shoulder through their back. It's just like simple explanations or something in nature. But you're not going to be perfect. So you have to be open to have people ask questions. The second thing is you may miss something legitimately. I had a coach just kind of going bananas about a potential studs-up challenge. It wasn't a studs-up challenge. It was actually a follow-through. A player slid to play a ball, and there was a player standing beyond the ball, and he slid.
Maybe he made some contact with his studs into the next player's foot or ankle. I'm not sure. But it was really, really light, and it was a two-man system. And I was on one side of the field, and this play happened completely on the other side of the field, like 50 yards away, and my partner was 50 yards away. There's no way I could have seen it well. And it was a little bit after the play. I just didn't see it. And so the coach is all upset saying, you know, that was a foul, that was a foul.
And I was like, coach, I'm sorry. I didn't see it. I might have missed that one. That's it. And it's like, what's he going to do? You can't say, well, you should call it anyway. I'm like, no, man, I didn't see it. I'm sorry. I didn't see it. I may have missed that one. A little bit of humility goes so far. Number one, it humanizes you. It humanizes you. We're not perfect. And that's okay. And people need to understand we're not perfect. And you need to appreciate that you're not perfect.
You're never going to be perfect. At the end of the game, be honest with yourself. You know, what could you have done better? You know, could it have been positioning you could have done better? Maybe game management that you could have done better? mechanics, cards. Should you have given a yellow card in a scenario? Were you too quick to give a yellow card in a scenario? Could that challenge have been a red card?
It's always good to really ask yourself these questions so that you can deal with the next time and just recognize that you're, again, not going to be perfect. And that's okay. You're learning. Every game is a learning opportunity. It's all good. The fourth one here is about abusive coaches and parents. Now, abusive for me, when I hear the word abuse, whether it be verbal abuse or threats of physical violence, that's a problem for me, especially the games that I'm doing.
I am doing grassroots games. I'm doing high school games. I don't have security. There's no security in the stands that are preventing people or should be preventing people from running onto the pitch. That should be making sure coaches are behaving and things of that nature that are protecting me out to the parking lot. Professional refs get that.
I mean, even at the USL 2 level games that I've done or MPSL games, there's someone who's supposed to be walking us onto the pitch, walking us off to the pitch, making sure we get to our cars okay. That doesn't happen at the grassroots level. So if you are in an environment where there is a spectator who is being abusive, meaning threats of violence or really strong personal attacks, it's profane, it's prolonged, We need to deal with that. That is not acceptable.
We have, in the laws of the game, we have the ability for coaches and players to award warnings, yellow cards, and red cards. We need to use those tools. I do not want anyone to be abused ever. Ever. What we permit is what we accept. And I will not accept that. I will not permit that. It's not okay. now outbursts of passion are going to happen. And you have to deal with it. I was working a game the other night, and I am all the way down in the corner.
Again, it's a two-person system, so you follow the play all the way down to the goal line if it's on your side of the field. And I am all the way on the goal line. I am like 10 feet, maybe 15 feet away from this play where a defender is kind of shielding the ball out of the bounds. It's a bouncing ball. He's being challenged for the ball. And he's kind of looking back, shielding the ball, and the ball bounces. bounces off his toe as it's going out of bounds. And so I call a corner kick.
And the coach for his team, like he's really upset, like, you know, like demonstrating body language, like what, what? And I'm like, it hit your toe. I'm sorry. It's a corner kick. And the coach who is like 60 yards away, like all the way on the other side of the center line is like, that's not a corner kick. That's not a corner kick. And I'm like, okay. So in that scenario, do I need to run 65 yards up the field to explain to her, it's like, hey, laws of physics here.
The ball was coming down at this angle. It hit his toe. It bounced up and went in this other angle. I know it's a corner kick. I was standing there 10 feet away. You're 60 yards away. Do I really need to do that? No. No. What? To prove that I'm right? To make her look bad in front of her players? That's not going to help Anyone. It's not going to make her appreciate my call more. It might just make her angry. It's showing her up. I have to stop the game for this. Just ignore it.
I know I made the right decision. Move on. You're going to have parents who shout out all sorts of things. That's not a card. How could you call that foul? How could you not call that foul? Offside. Are you kidding me? All of those things. Just let it go. Just let it go.
Unless it's the same parent or the same coach on every, you know, I mean, prolonged and persistent, meaning it keeps on going on or it gets into the, you know, we talked about abusive, but it gets into personal or profane where they're using profanity or they're really making personal attacks on you and your credibility of official. You just need to let those things go. It's going to happen. You know, people say things out loud.
I was sitting at a lacrosse game last night, and I never go to lacrosse games, but one of my buddies from college was coaching the visiting lacrosse team. He came to our high school, and I went to go see him. And I'm sitting there in the stands, and I was just blown away. It's like the same things. That's not out. How can that be out? They didn't see the line. It's a feint on that field. And then there was another one. Oh, the ref's got to get control of the game.
It does not matter what sport it is. If it's youth sports in America or professional sports, people in the are going to be yelling things out. As long as it's not abusive, profane, or prolonged, just let it go. The fifth thing, watch the game. Are you watching a lot of professional football? Are you watching other referees? Who's your referee idol? Who do you want to be like? When you watch referees out there, be like, yeah, that's the person. That's the man or the woman that I aspire to be.
I love how they handle themselves out there. I like their presence. Their mannerisms kind of match mine or their personality matches mine. There are some that are very serious, come across as a very serious official. If you're that personality, great. There are some that come across a little bit more jovial. If you're that personality, great. I'm not saying you need to be them, but... You need to watch other officials and see how they work.
They've obviously made it to the professionals because they carry themselves well, that they have strong knowledge of the game, their body language, their mechanics, all of those things. Watch football. Additionally, there are so many scenarios that you've never seen before, especially if you're a young referee. I know it sounds crazy. Hey, you've watched a good amount of soccer.
You're 13, 14, 15, even if you're 40 years old but man I have to tell you I have watched thousands of games I have now reffed over a thousand games and still every single week there's something that happens that I've never seen before you know or I've never been in the middle of the pitch and had to make a call on before but it is so helpful to watch football so that you watch other referees and you find different scenarios so that when the scenario happens to you you're like oh yep no I've seen
that before and here's what we do The last thing, number six, is find a mentor. So find other refs who have been through the fire and been where you want to go. If you want to move up, it might be a good idea to try and get assigned with them. Reach out to your local signer and say, hey, can I work a game with John? Or can I work a game with Jill? Whoever it might be, so that you can watch them work and ask them questions. And then you can be reviewing the game together.
Pre-game, halftime, after the game. It's so important to ask them questions. If it's a really high-level match, you may even get to use comms, which is fantastic. I can't even begin to tell you how dramatically my... World changed as a referee when I started working some higher level games these last two years and I got to listen to top officials, people who are regional and they're national candidates.
They're going to be moving up to national referees and listen to them talk through the game live, whether it's the assistant referee and what they were saying and the center referee and what they were saying and how they were verbalizing to each other what they were seeing on the field was unbelievable valuable. I will tell you, if you go to a top game Try and go with other top referees and just sit there and listen to them watch the game and listen to them talk about the officials out there.
That's fantastic. can you really get a mentor? Can a mentor come watch you work? Generally speaking, your state association, if you're here in the US, and also I know in the UK as well, you can get developmental assessments. Yes, there are paid assessments. If you are actually trying to get your regional status or national, you need to have a couple paid assessments that are like $100 to $120 a pop, but a developmental assessment is free from the state referee administrator.
Reach out to your state SRA and see if you can get a proper developmental assessment. where they really break you down, not emotionally, but they go through your performance and talk to you about what you could be doing better and help you improve. Recognize also that your first mentor may not be your last mentor as you grow as a referee.
Just like teachers, your kindergarten teacher, although probably wonderful and you loved her or him, isn't the right person to teach you advanced physics in college. As you grow, your mentors are probably going to change.
Well, I hope you enjoyed that and those six great lessons from Mark again I can't take credit for him but those are my experiences that I added into it number one you got to do games number two get out of your comfort zone number three coping with mistakes number four dealing with abusive coaches and parents number five watching the game number six finding a mentor whether you're just starting out or you're looking to advance we can and always should learn and grow the day you stop learning is
the day you become irrelevant if you like today's pod please check out my I appreciate your support. And as always, I hope your next game is red card free.