Verbal Abuse From Parents, Coaches Is Causing A Referee Shortage In Youth Sports
Warren Graver raised the whistle to his lips midway through the second half, bracing to shift his focus from the sideline hysterics to the girls’ soccer game at hand three years ago.
And that’s when the veteran youth soccer referee saw two men walking onto the field.
It was a Sunday afternoon at an under-16 tournament in Vienna, and Graver had just ejected an invective-spewing coach. Without warning or permission, two angry parents marched across the field to take the coach’s place on the bench.
Uncertainty gripped Graver. Emotions were running high. There was no field marshal or senior official in the vicinity. It was the only time Graver can remember feeling fear as a referee.
“It could have easily escalated into something physical,” Graver said.
Soccer referee David Shand runs to keep up with the action during a high school game between Battlefield and Osbourn. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Following a decade as a referee, Graver returned for one more season. But he said that incident in Vienna crystallized a creeping realization: His days in the job were numbered.
“I said, ‘I would rather spend my time on the weekends with my kids and with my wife than stand out here and be abused by these parents,’ ” said Graver, who kept good to his word and hasn’t been a referee in the past two years. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Graver’s experience — or something similar — plays out every weekend across the country.
Administrators contend that escalating verbal abuse is partially to blame for a dwindling referee pool in youth and high school sports. The fallout is crippling officiating bodies mired in a deeply cutthroat sports culture, one that often holds amateur referees to a professional standard.
Perhaps no sport suffers from the shortage more than soccer. Player participation numbers rise every year in the D.C. area while referee organizations grapple with stagnation or decline, leaving youth leagues in a constant scramble to fill officiating slots.
Soccer is not alone in its troubles. Mid-Atlantic Officials, one of the D.C. area’s largest referee assigning groups for baseball, is enduring its worst shortage of umpires and referees in more than 25 years, according to Commissioner John Porter.
Center referee Scott Hartman halts play between Battlefield and Osbourn on May 9 in Haymarket, Va. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Only about half of the umpires who complete one year are back for a second year, and the five-to-seven year attrition rate hovers around 80 percent.