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BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
Mark Gordon is both a soccer official and an independent assignor of soccer officials for eight different area high schools, and he has good news to report: There are very few varsity soccer games this fall that do not have officials assigned.
But there is always more recruiting going on.
“We’re always trying to find referees in high school,” Gordon said.
The idea that officials leave the profession due to verbal abuse from parents and fans might be perception more than reality. But one thing that is true is that while officials get older, high school athletes stay the same age.
And so there is a never ending search for more officials.
“I can tell you as an assignor myself personally that at eight schools that I assign, I’ve only got two or three games right now that I’m missing a referee on,” Gordon said. “So from a local perspective, at the eight high schools I assign, three weeks ago, I had every single game for the fall season covered. And then things happen. Somebody calls in and says, Hey, I got a conflict on this date or a surgery or I made a mistake or I’m double-booked and then you have a school that may call in and say, ‘Oh, we’re going to add a game opening weekend,’ when you’ve already got seven schools.
“So from my perspective, locally of the eight schools that I do around northern Indiana, I’m sitting pretty well. Across the state, I don’t know.”
Gordon, 64, said he has been an official for close to 30 years. He said he started in the early 1990s with the Fulton County Soccer Association and the recreation division and worked his way up.
He founded Argos FC in 1999, and he said he had to become a licensed assignor because it is a licensed United States Soccer Federation affiliate, and licenses are required to assign games at that level.
In 2014, when he became the first coach in Tippecanoe Valley boys soccer history, he began assigning high school games.
He currently assigns officials to games at Rochester, Valley, Winamac, Lakeland Christian, North Miami, North White, Oregon-Davis and Wabash high schools.
He is also the state registrar of the Indiana State Referees Association, a USSF body based out of Indianapolis.
Gordon describes himself as a “baseball, basketball, football guy from the past.” Around 1993, the FCSA started, and Gordon began his involvement as a coach. One of his players was his daughter Chantal. Today, Chantal Rensberger is the Rochester girls soccer coach.
“I started picking up the game more and more and more and more, and saying, ‘Jeez, we need referees. We need to do this.’ So I jumped right away in and became a licensed USSF referee and also picked up my IHSAA license shortly after that. It was within a year of everything I started becoming licensed.
“And I’m always used as an example as a dad who is coaching who did more and then officiating, you know, has become a big part of my resume.”
He calls Tony Asoera an Elkhart resident, one of his mentors. Asoera, 85, is a USSF official who worked both high school and college games and still works today. In fact, he officiated a festival game at Argos a couple weeks ago, according to Gordon.
Another of Gordon’s mentors was Ted Ummel, who coached and oversaw referees in the Argos Youth Soccer Association. Ummel died of acute myeloid leukemia in 2010 at the age of 55.
Gordon is an Indiana University grad. While in college, he ran a football program for the Bloomington Housing Authority. He was a parks and recreation major along with being a political science and environmental policy major and received college credit for it before leaving for the military. He has spent 41 years as a radiologic technologist and currently works at Woodlawn Hospital.
Gordon was asked if he considers finding new officials to be a part of his job.
“I’m constantly, constantly looking for people,” Gordon said. “I’m asking coaches. I talk to kids that are getting ready to graduate. That’s the biggest loss we have right there – the kids that played four years of high school and played rec and never have been an official. What are you doing after school? Are you going to go play college soccer? You and I know that the percentage of people can be counted on multiple hands. So how about giving officiating a chance? I’m always, always encouraging high school kids. I will be asking kids here from the Rochester teams, ‘Hey, are any of you guys interested after high school becoming a high school referee?’ … That’s what we need. In local communities, you need the kids that are coming back that played the sport to look beyond just the field and kicking the ball into what can I do next? Well, if you’re knowledgable, become a referee and help the game.”
Some of the young officials he has mentored include his daughters Vanessa and Chantal.
Gordon said that during the pandemic, many in-person training clinics were canceled. That was not good for numbers, so much of the training now happens online through both the USSF and the IHSAA.
“A new license was created called the Digital Referee License,” Gordon said. “That Digital Referee License is an online license that youth can take and adults can take. There was a whole shift change on the USSF side. I was an instructor. That means I would go put on a four, five-hour clinic somewhere – field sessions, talk about book, TV with laws of the game, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
“They went away with the instructor part of that and now are bringing more referees with experience in as what’s called mentors, where now I’m a licensed mentor. So my license went from assessor stuff to I’m now a mentor. So if a group of referees that do one of these online modules and do the training and get their digital license from U.S. Soccer Learning and want to get more experience, then we can put them in a mentoring session where we find two teams that are practicing or something going on and bring referees to that and give them the ability to do some assessing. … But that perspective changed too which was an attempt to bolster numbers.”
Officials are independent contractors, which is where the financial aspect comes into play.
“It’s hard to find some of those referees,” Gordon said. “And as you can understand, if you would ask me the question, ‘Why would somebody do this over this?’ Well, as an independent contractor, the money. Not everybody enjoys doing a U14 girls match for $55 or $60 in the center and $40 on the lines when you can do one college game for whatever.”
Gordon also has over 30 years of coaching experience. He was the first coach in Tippecanoe Valley boys and girls soccer history and also coached the Culver boys team.
Gordon said that coaches are often cultivated to become officials..
“I encourage young coaches to pick up a license and just get it and have it,” Gordon said. “Especially if you’re doing youth soccer, and you’re a parent and you show up at a field, and they’re short a referee, all they’ve got to do is call the assignor and say, ‘Hey, we have a licensed referee here. Can you add him to the game?’ And they can be paid to do it.”
Gordon cited a National Federation of State High School Associations study from 2022 that said there is a need for 50,000 more soccer officials. He was asked why some officials leave the profession.
“Everybody thinks that referees leave for one reason only: because they are being yelled at,” Gordon said. “That’s not the case. I am 64 years old, so where’s one factor there? Age, for some. Conditioning. Health. Work commitments. I’m not a high school primary coach anymore because I accepted a job, and I work three nights a week at a hospital. So there’s nothing I can do. I can’t be the five-night-a-week coach that I used to be.”
Gordon said an official cannot be “high-strung” and cannot be a “robot.” He said the USSF lists 17 laws of the game but that there is an unofficial 18th law – common sense.
“A lot of the kids over the years have reported that it has to do with you get on the field and the first thing you got is you got some middle-aged guy screaming and yelling in your head – a parent, a coach, even some kids. ‘This isn’t for me.’ It takes a special person to be able to be out there to run a field, to sweat, to manage and to work with others when you’re working with a crew.”
