2- Pool Referee (Youth Pool)

What is the Youth Pool?

Each team is required to provide one referee to be their "team referee", (also called a "ref in the pool") to officiate games for the referee organization that assigns officials for your team's age and competition level. This means:

• U10-U14 Recreational teams (both LWYSA "in-house" games and WSYSA District 2): Your referees are assigned by LWYSA. You must provide a referee who agrees to take five (5) assignments for LWYSA. This means taking games assigned through this web site - http://referees.lwysa.org
• U15-U19 Recreational teams: Your referees are assigned by EKCSRA. You must provide a referee who agrees to take ten (10) assignments for EKCSRA. This means referees assigned through the EKCSRA web site http://www.ekcsra.org
• All Crossfire Select and Crossfire Premier (including all District, RCL, and NPSL play): Your center referees are assigned by EKCSRA. You must provide a referee who agrees to take ten (10) assignments for EKCSRA.

To track this, we ask each team to have their team referee tell us that they are supporting the team by going to the referee web site and indicating that they are representing the team.

How to Designate Yourself as a team referee in LWYSA

In order to be designated as a teams "referee in the pool of referees" you must do the following:

1. Log in to the LWYSA referee system
2. Click on REFEREE
3. Under REFEREE, click on "Youth Pool".
4. A list of LWYSA's teams will appear. Find the team that you are going to represent on the list. Then, click on the number next to the team name.
5. The team information will appear and a box labeled CONFIRM will be there. Click on CONFIRM and your are done.

You must repeat this procedure one time at the beginning of each season. READ THIS!!: If you are a ref for a team whose referee are assigned by EKCSRA, the "ref in pool" is tracked for those teams on the EKCSRA web site. Go to http://www.ekcsra.org, sign on there, and sign up to be a ref in pool there for these teams. For 2013, it is our understanding that to be a "pool referee" in EKCSRA, you must be at least 16. Younger referees may still take assignments, but a 16+ year old is required for being a pool referee and generating priority. EKCSRA is separate from LWYSA. You do need to verify with EKCSRA their current policies. (Update 2014 - Check with EKCSRA to see what their pool requirement is for the current year.)

What are your obligations as a team referee

When you sign up to be a team referee within LWYSA, you are promising to take five (5) referee assignments during the course of the Fall season, LWYSA Year End Tournament, or President's Cup matches assigned via this web site. Games assigned via EKCSRA do not count towards meeting your LWYSA referee in the pool requirements. Both Center Referee and Assistant Referee assignments count towards meeting this obligation.

Can you sign up for more than one team

Yes. However, the games you take are divided by the number of teams you have signed up for. So, if you are the team referee to two teams, and referee 5 games, each team only gets "credit" for 2 1/2 games, which isn't enough. If you sign up for two teams, then you are really promising you will take twice as many assignments, ten.

What happens if a team doesn't have a pool referee?

LWYSA will continue to make every reasonable effort to assign referees. However, because there is a shortage of referees, certain actions are taken. Note that these actions are not intended to punish teams. Rather, they are intended to try and make certain that those teams that ARE providing referees get rewarded for doing so, and IF there is a shortage, then any consequences of that shortage are borne by those teams not providing a referee to the pool of officials. The following actions are taken:

• For Crossfire U11-U12 teams, if the team does not have an ACTIVE referee in the pool, then LWYSA may (depending on the number of referees working) not assign ARs to their home games. ARs triple the number of officials required, and without a referee being provided by a team, we simply don't have enough referees. By reducing the number of ARs assigned, we increase the likelihood that all games will have a center referee.
• For other teams, IF there is a situation in which a game is expected to go uncovered, then assignors are instructed to make certain that teams providing a referee to the pool have referees before those that do not.
• In all cases, the referee system flags those teams that are providing a referee to the pool and referees are encouraged to sign up to officiate those games FIRST. In other words, if a referee planned to officiate a game at 60 acres at 11:00am, and there were two teams needing a referee - one having a ref in the pool, one not - the referee would be expected to sign up for the match for the team with a ref in the pool.

The system flags teams based on the number of games a referee signs up to officiate. So, it is not enough to just say "I'm the team ref". The ref must actually sign up for at least 5 games before the system acknowledges them as "active".