The Lone Man on the Field

The white logo on my black T-shirt read, ‘Trinity Sports Official’ and that was the only official appearance to me as a Trinity sports official for the soccer game on Tuesday night. I had the least official appearance of all the referees. I wasn’t even wearing my shorts, all of them were. Have you ever seen a referee officiating a game in his grey trousers? I am not surprised. But I was trying my best not to even spill a hint that it was the first game of my life that I was officiating. I was trying to act confident, but my struggle was apparent since confidence has always eluded me. One of the main reasons why I chose to be a sports official was because I wanted to gain confidence, be the in-charge and maintain authority since in real life, I have always struggled with developing a ‘bossy’ attitude.

As the clock struck 9:15, as the main referee, I called the captains to come to the center and call the sides on a tossed coin. Wasn’t I loud enough? No one even turned in my direction. I wondered how they could even ignore me, didn’t they know I was the official? My trousers could be elusive but at least I was wearing the official T-shirt. I knew what I had to be done. I blew my whistle, it made a funny noise but at least the captains walked towards me. Apparently, I realized I did not have a coin. And that is how my first referee debut began. But I knew I had to act confident like every other referee who knows what is going on so, I improvised with Eric Elliot's little trick of placing either one or two fingers behind my back and letting one of the captains call. After the captains chose sides, I realized the team of ‘Engineers’ did not have minimum number of players and the game couldn’t be started. We were to wait until the ‘Engineers’ had at least two girls on their team; it was a co-recreational soccer if you didn’t know. I wondered why these sorts of unusual, anomalous events always happen with me, it was making me nervous for sure. I had to award a goal to the other team as a penalization for not being punctual. Members of the ‘Engineers’ team arrived two minutes later and the game was about to start. But how could it start without my permission? Not a chance. I blew my whistle, as hard as I could; after all, they had to know I was the boss there.

Running on a wet ground in trousers is not fun at all when you are not wearing proper soccer shoes. My laces kept on getting untied every 5 minutes. The players stared at me every time I bent to tie my laces. I realized they were trying to imply that it is the players who tie laces during a game; a referee doing the same appears so ‘unofficial’. I was making every attempt to make right calls to hide my inexperience. I had never realized the task of a referee would demand such excellent coordination of senses and the central nervous system. Scientists claim that a human brain can do only one particular task at a time, but I would say, “Look at the referees, they are the perfect examples of human brain multitasking. From the corner of the eye, they have to distinguish between the colors of the teams and also follow the ball, make close calls, instant decisions and be able to direct attention as quickly as the ball moves without any clue what would happen next.” Really, how many things can you watch out for, with a pair of limited- view-angled eyes?

The first half of the game ended in good note. I was glad that no one had the faintest idea about my debut. I did not make any mistakes. The second half began with my whistle and this time I blew it even harder. The game was going well and there did not seem to be any significant aggression among any of the teams, if at all. I realized I had not blown my whistle even once for any foul conceded. Was it a hint of my inexperience, I thought. Or did I not have sharp enough eyes to spot fouls? I knew I had to prove my officiating ability. Bang! A girl was tackled and she fell down. Without even waiting for the signal from the assistant referee (linesman), I blew my whistle. Everyone seemed to look at me with fear and helplessness. They realized I was the big boss while I tried hard to suppress my smirk of confidence.

I have to admit, time seemed to have frozen in the first half of 20 minutes. I kept on looking at the scoreboard repeatedly out of nervousness and every second passed as if it were a minute. But as the game was approaching its end, I realized I was blowing my whistle more often since the game was beginning to heat up, but the screeches of my whistle served them right. How could they forget I was still around? The second half added legitimacy and authority to my sports official status since, I did not have to bend to tie my laces, not even once. It was my most enjoyable 40 minutes in the last couple of months. I was starting to gain more confidence and it seemed by the end of 30 minutes, I was no more the same referee I had been. It was an enriching experience that boosted my confidence to not be deterred from taking this arduous challenge in the future.