Information: Help

REF EVALUATIONS: Submitting a Referee Evaluation

Where are they?:These are found under INFORMATION on the left side of the screen.

Finding your Match

When you first access the referee evaluation system, you will be shown a list recently completely matches. You need to find the match for which you wish to complete an evaluation. Since the list of matches can be quite long, we have provided a mechanism for you to search for your match. You can type the name of your team (or any part of the name) in the team name space, then press search. It may sometimes be helpful to indicate the gender and age of your team as well, since many teams have the same name. When you see the match listed, click on the little symbol under Ref, and the evaluation form will appear. Note: Referee evaluations must be completed within 15 days.

Making Choices

Our referee evaluation form is very simple. It is targeted towards the level of referee you will likely see on your matches. For U10-U12 play, these are almost always brand nnew referees. For U13 and older, referees usually have one or more seasons of experiece, so our evaluation forms change slightly. At the top of the form is information about the match. We'd like to know your name and your role on the team, but that isn't required. We begin by asking 6 simple questions. You simply find the response that best describes your experience or feelings about the official you just watched. Then, click on the appropriate bubble within the box. We can actually tell a lot from these few questions.

Comments

If you have specific comments that you would like to make, please do that here. Remember that the purpose of an evaluation is to provide a means to improve our officiating. Therefore, specific information can help us a lot. If, in your opinion, the referee seemed to be missing a lot of "elbows"...let us know. If the referee was blowing the whistle for fouls, but nobody seemed to know what they were, let us know. Just keep the comments short and to the point. Remember that we are reading LOTS of these evaluations. This is also the place to tell us if you think the referee does not understand one of the laws of the game, or was misapplying that law.

Save

When you are finished preparing your report, press the "save" button.

Can't Find Your Match?

The main reasons you may not be able to find your match are:

1. The match is more than 15 days old. We cut off submitting evaluations for a particular match after this time because we feel too much time has elapsed, and it is far too easy to get referees and matches confused.
2. The match is not an LWYSA home match. The only matches that we process evaluations for are "home" games, since LWYSA is responsible, either directly or through EKCSRA, for assigning the referees to those games. For away games, you need to contact the association that assigns the referees to those games.

Evaluating Assistant Referees (ARs)

Assistant referees are the officials with the flags on the side of the field. These evaluations aren't really targeted towards those officials. However, if an AR leaves a strong impression, positive or negative, please make a comment describing which AR and what you observed. We'll try and sort out which referee you are talking about and take appropriate action.

About our Evaluations

When you submit an evaluation, it is connected to the referee so that our referee assignor and referee mentors can readily see all evaluations submitted about a given referee. We don't ask you a bunch of questions like "did the referee call throw-ins correctly" or "did the referee get offside right" and then ask you to assign a 1-10 value because (a) everybody uses that 1-10 scale differently and (b) there will always be situations in which you and the referee see things differently. As a person reading an evaluation, we have no way of knowing if you, or the referee, were right. In fact, both of you may be "right" depending on where you were standing at the time of an incident. Instead, we want you to try and step back and look at the big picture. A referee makes hundreds of little decisions in the 1-2 hours they are out there. OVERALL, how did they do? It is frustrating if the referee makes a game alterring decision - but that's part of being a sports official. We shouldn't be determining whether a referee is a "good referee" or "poor referee" based on one or two decisions in a match - hard as that may be. Thanks for taking the time to take evaluations seriously and read this. Be assured that, even though you won't generally get feedback for your evaluation, each and every one is read, studied, and available as ONE part of our review of each referee.