Civility on the Soccer Field The referee flipped his coin, signaling the start of what seemed to be a never ending soccer game. As the captains ran back from the center circle, the referee called over his shoulder, “Girls, we’re going to be playing big girl soccer today, so I won’t be calling any fouls”. Not surprisingly, this game turned out to be the most injurious game in my soccer career. When the final whistle blew, there was a total of two concussions, a dislocated hip, a blown out knee, and countless scrapes and bruises on all of us contenders. The parents, rooting for their respective team, were the ones horrified most of all. While they could have yelled at the referee, acted in an impolite manner, and possibly had their team disqualified from the tournament, they decided to follow the civil process established by the league; this was writing letters of complaint and sending them to the tournament organizer. Through this process, the parents were able to express their displeasure with the referee without compromising the team’s ability to win.…show more content… Any other approach would have been unsuccessful for the frustrated parents because a referee has full control over a soccer game. He could easily have done a number of detrimental things to the 2 team, including ending the game at any time in favor of the opponents. Unfortunately, this type of referee is not that uncommon in the soccer community. They attempt to rile up parents for the purpose of disciplining them. The way that the parents handled this particular situation was most effective with this type of officiator because they collectively identify a bad referee to the tournament coordinators, who would have otherwise not known his low skill
