[Jbkerns]

Another ref chiming in. As my first year as a referee it was definitely interesting to be on the other side of the table. I was a driver when I was a student, and now I occasionally drive coach (depending on the season). This year I happened to be both a ref and drive coach.

It is understandable that people won't go out of their way to post positive opinions. That takes effort and motivation that you lack when compared to when you are angry about something. I'm not surprised that the number of posts that are criticizing referees outnumber the posts thanking us by a large margin. But, I will shout out the teams and mentors at CHS district events. Going off of the posts here, you ALL showed us love that was scarce in other places. Unlike some of the posters here, I was thanked numerous times while wearing the zebra stripes, and drive teams were all awesome to work with.

We are all human. Referees are trained for their roles, but that doesn't make them immune to messing up. It will happen. I refereed something like 247 matches over the season. To think that I didn't make a mistake in one of those matches would be foolish. Not only that, but it is my first year reffing. I know I made mistakes, and I learned from them.

Overall, the reactions here on the forums are expected. The only thing that I have issue with the jump between complaining about some calls, and calling all reffing this year bad. Yes, specific instances may have been questionable. Yes, people have the right to complain about us. But, when you look at the sheer amount of matches that went on, and then compare the amount of calls that are complained about, it paints a VERY big difference on how "bad" reffing was this year.

And again, shout outs to the teams at the events I reffed at. You were the definition of Gracious Professionals, and made my day with your comments.