Gregory Scott Rivers Sportsmanship Scholarship: This year’s
recipient of our Association’s $500 scholarship was
Christopher Miller. “Chipper” played for the
IMC Champion Bend Lava Bears this past season. He was recognized
by over 60% of the Referees who cast their ballots. Chris
has worked with a lot of us as a USSF Referee during the
times that he is not playing soccer. He helped set an example
of leadership and good sportsmanship for his teammates during
the season. Some of the other nominees for the award were
Joaquin Rodriguez (Redmond High School), Justin Berman (Summit
High School) and Andrew Rodriguez (Mt. View High School).
Bill Westphal Update: Bill was sentenced to 29 months. With
good behavior and time already served, he should be discharged
from a minimum security placement in 16 months. Bill had
over 40 letters of support from people that he had worked
with and those he knew from soccer. The Court clearly recognized
his many years of serving the community and others. The Court
also accepted the testimony/evidence of diminished mental
capacity. He will be at the Lane County Corrections Facility
in Eugene for several weeks, before he is evaluated for security
at the Federal Prison in Sheridan, Oregon. He will then be
sent to the appropriate facility, probably Phoenix. There
will be counseling/therapy to deal with the management of
his bipolar disease and gambling addiction. Bill sent Mike
Cleavenger several thank you letters to distribute among
his old friends in soccer. Bill expressed a lot of sorrow
regarding the embarrassment that his behavior caused to his
old friends, the soccer association and the community. He
expressed remorse at the fear that he had caused the bank
employees and what his actions had done to his family. He
hopes to repay everyone for helping Pam move and for the
physical/financial contributions that the committee made
to help him transition from custody to home. Bill hopes to
make much better decisions in the future and he hopes he
can still call everyone a friend. Several people helped out
tremendously with Bill who were no longer members of our
Association; like Bob Dietz, John Maniscalco and Chuck Burley.
The group that got together to help move Pam actually packed
up the entire house and moved her out in a single day. Mike
Cleavenger wanted to thank everyone who chipped in to help
in Bill’s cause.
COSOA Website & Recruiting of New Officials: Please
remember to periodically check our Association’s Website
or give the website address (cosoa.org) to your friends who
might be interested in officiating soccer games for information
and contact numbers. This is the time to be recruiting new
Officials into our Association (not two weeks before the
start of the High School season). Thanks to John Aubry, our
website has been current and updated regularly and would
be a great resource of information for prospective new Officials.
Mileage for High School Games: The three Bend High School’s
have expressed some issues with the mileage fees which they
were charged for in-town travel to their games. Claudio and
myself have met with the Officers of the others Referee Associations
(Basketball, Baseball, Volleyball, Football, Wrestling) in
Central Oregon to come up with a standardized method of billing
the schools which we serve. Although the other Referee Associations
do not bill for mileage for in-town travel to schools, they
did not think that our request for such a billing was unreasonable;
especially given the price of gasoline this past Fall. We
really couldn’t find any middle ground in the way each
of our Referee Associations bills for the services that we
provide. One Association bills mileage for every member of
a crew traveling to a game, even if they are all riding in
the same car! What we are likely to do as an Association
for the disputed amount in mileage with the three Bend High
Schools is to in all likelihood split the difference in costs
with them for this season. In the future, we will do a better
job of increasing our pre-season billing to cover all likely
costs and refund the difference back to the school after
the season has ended. This is what all the other Referee
Associations are doing. The one thing that all Referee Associations
agreed on during our meeting was that it is impossible to
get more money out of the schools once they have paid for
a service. We pre-billed the schools for what their costs
came to for last season … but that did not account
for the additional games and additional costs for mileage
that were incurred by the end of the season. Most of the
referees who have been doing this for a few years know how
long (if ever) it takes some of the schools to pay their
second bills.
Assignments: Since there won’t be any High School
games to referee until next September (bummer!), send as
email to Pat Evoy (coassign@oregontrail.net / USSF Commissioner)
if you are interested in picking up any Youth games that
might become available on the weekends. There are also many
games in the valley which are always in need of officials
(if you happen to be going over the pass and want to work
some games on the other side of the mountains (they don’t
have much snow over there). You would need to contact Janet
Berri for assignments in the valley this winter. I am sorry
that I don’t have Janet’s email at this time,
but if you email Pat … he’s sure to have that
information for you.
T R A I N I N G
I thought it
would be a good idea to review Shielding / Screening / or
Obstruction in this Newsletter. Here’s an excerpt from
the new FIFA Laws of the Game Handbook:
