Ontario Soccer is raising a red card against harassment and abuse of its referees.
The governing body is getting set to roll out 50 body cameras this summer as part of a pilot project to help curb abusive behaviour aimed at officials around the province.
It’s a concerning, yet necessary step in keeping players, coaches and parents in line during competition says Derek Bridgman, general manager of Cambridge Youth Soccer.
“These instances of abuse are mounting,” Bridgman said.
“Ontario Soccer has made a conscious effort to educate clubs that games can’t go on without officials and they won’t put up with this abuse.”
Bridgman says finding referees has been tough, with retention rates hovering around the 20 per cent mark coming out of the pandemic.
One of the biggest reasons for the shortage is many referees are getting fed up with the lack of respect they’re shown during games. Everything from verbal to physical abuse has pushed officials leave the job.
Most organizations, including Cambridge Youth Soccer, have a club head referee. Their role is to recruit, schedule and oversee the officials at the grassroots level. The higher levels of competition have their referees assigned by Southwest Soccer, the district which Cambridge falls under.
Typically the younger referees, who can be 14 or 15 years old, will be mentored by more senior officials. The problem is with a lack of referees the mentorship aspect of development gets put on the back burner.
“I don't know how we can expect a 14-year-old learning the game to deal with being berated and harassed by parents,” Bridgman said.
“We get into an unfortunate situation where you have a young referee that doesn’t have the support they'd normally have in the past.”
Currently investigations into such behaviour are based on written reports and eye-witnesses but Bridgman admits a lot of younger referees don’t have the confidence to report incidents.
While Bridgman isn’t entirely sure when the body cameras will make their way to the city, he’s hopeful the organization will see them used sometime later this summer.
He wants everyone involved to understand that Cambridge experiences these issues just like other city’s in the province.
“Youth sport has become so competitive and such a big business,” he said.
“We don’t see the extent of incidents like they do in the Greater Toronto Area where they have more games, but we're not immune.”
What impact the cameras will have on deterring poor behaviour remains to be seen, but it appears to be a step in the right direction.
“I don’t know if it’ll work in the beginning but it'll help with education over time where they can build clips and put it into educational training for coaches, players and parents,” Bridgman said.
“Sometimes all it takes is a parent seeing how they act once and then they never do it again. It’s extremely unfortunate it got to this point. We’d all love to be able to have a game where everyone plays for 90 minutes, shakes hands and goes home at the end of the day.”
