Wow, I would be crying like a baby in a fetal position.
Wow, I would be crying like a baby in a fetal position.
What was the ref actually watching?
11/6/2009
New Mexico Women's Soccer Player Suspended Indefinitely
University of New Mexico head women's soccer coach Kit Vela announced today that junior defender Elizabeth Lambert has been suspended indefinitely for her actions in Thursday's match against BYU in the semifinals of the Mountain West Conference Championship in Provo, Utah.
As I ref, it is VERY hard to see the close contact stuff ie. Hair pulling, elbowing, shoving. You rely on your assistant referees to catch that stuff but if they miss it there isnt much you can do.
BUT, I will say this. Some of those tackles that were on the ball, ESPECIALLY the ball getting kicked to the girls face after a foul, should have resulted in IMMEDIATE red cards. The intent was to harm in MANY of those cases and how the girl ONLY got a yellow card is beyond me.
I have been a ref for 7 years now and never seen things that nasty go unpunished. The school should face scholarship reductions and other NCAA sanctions.
I think that the refs out to look at the tape of the whole game and try to explain why they could not keep better track of what was going on. At this point I think that 1) there are insufficient refs. They worry about the ball on the sideline where everyone can see it and do not closely monitor the field. You can't let a lot of little stuff go or you get big stuff.
I would rather see too many yellows and some reds than too few. This is especially the case in youth soccer. In three years of U-12/13/14 there has never been a yellow card, much less a red one and that probably covers around 100 games played or at least watched in full. Those statistics indicate that there is either an explicit or de facto policy not to use yellow cards. Thus, kids learn to play rough. Instead, they let players get hurt because they do not want to interfere with the (virtually no consequence game). As a result, the play is biased towards the rougher team.
No doubt, the refs did a TERRIBLE job, and the official team itself deserves to be suspended like the SEC has done in football recently.
But, the standard for acceptable play and sportsmanship is set by the coach. Some of the on-ball action, including kicking the girl in the head with the ball would be a major infraction even in football and has no place at all in womens soccer. No doubt, the tactics of playing nasty, physical defense--well outside the rules--was put in place by the coach.
Fire the coach for this particularly disgusting display of "sportsmanship."
I have to agree with you. Do an investigation and if, as we suspect, the coach subtly encouraged this crap or took no action to stop it fire him or her.
I want to ask her out so bad.
1) Soccer chic rocks!
2) Soccer chic apparently wasn't the initiator on some of those (the attempted wedgie resulting in the pony tail drop, nice)
3) Some of those tackles were awesome
4) The refs were to blame were - as stated above
5) Women's soccer has gotten a hell of lot better since I last watched it - which was - ah - never
6) When will women's soccer move to bun huggers and halter tops?