As promised the new toy thing is kicking in, so on to league matters.

I've been getting a few complaints about the referees grabbing their cards just a little too quickly these days, specifically young officials and those that are new to the state. Normally I am completely in the corner of the boys and girls in black/yellow/red/blue and now the very stunning green, but in indoor such a card penalizes your team for a full 4 minutes, which can very much affect a game. Therefore this complaint needs to be looked into.

Unfortunately team management usually requires on the job training, so those of you being officiated by a youngster, please recognize that they are nervous and very little verbal, or physical interaction is required before he/she feels that they have to protect themselves. The experienced ones are a different story. Because of our small referee pool teams and officials meet up many times during the season. In turn, opinions about each other are formed very quickly and carried from game to game. The referee's challenge is to forget what an ass, or hack a player was in a prior game and view each event with complete neutrality. How successful they are in doing that ultimately defines their ability to call a fair and safe game.

As a league president it is paramount to support the officials and their actions during games. But knowing the unique challenges that they face each and every event, specifically as they officiate the same team for the third time in 2 weeks, it seems prudent to keep an open mind and allow for the possibility that the players may not be the problem during a game, but rather the referee's inability to forget their last match. Please don't expect a bunch of card reversals, especially if an ejection took place, but we are open to looking into specific instances of potential referee partiality. We will also continue to work with the Referee's Association to encourage ongoing referee training and develop ways to increase the number of adult officials.