Thank You

Although the tournament is over and we are all safely back in the US the Olympic spirit lives on. Thank you everyone for your support. Your words of encouragement and friendship are the final ingredients which made the 2008 Olympic games one of the most memorable experiences of our lives. All the best. Go USA.

USA WINS

Wow, what an amazing evening and a wonderful night to be representing the USA. The match was incredible, with of course the USWNT winning GOLD. The support of Women’s soccer was inspiring with over 50, ooo people in attendance including FIFA President Blatter, IOC President Jacques Rogge, Pele, Kobe Bryant, and Michelle Kwan…

Following the match, we had a ceremony of our own with all the referees being awarded our very own Olympic Medal and personalized certificate of participation. The only thing missing upon receipt was the playing of the National Anthem!

With the Women’s portion of the tournament completed, the women referees return to their respective countries on Friday. We all have mixed feeling about our departure; sad that the event we all dreamed of participating in for our entire lives is coming to an end, but at the same time looking forward to being on US soil with the opportunity to order a burrito on any given day :) :)

Thank you everyone for all your support these last many weeks. Wishing you all the best from Beijing.

Kari & Team

An Honor

It is always an honor to work a final match, in any capacity. There is no exception in this case. Kari has been selected to be the 4th official for the Bronze medal match of Germany v Japan. May the best team win and may the ball roll straight for the team of officials. Go USA.

More Than Just Football

The last several days have afforded us the opportunity to see a little more China and a little more of the Olympic Games. Yesterday day morning our training session consisted of a 2 hour excursion (walking and running) on the great wall. That is a heck of a work out - who knew that there were over 20% grades and some of them without stairs. I got up to a 94% HR on that last set of stairs. Way cool.

These Olympic Games have been incredible.

Thank you Official Sports International

Official Sports International has always been a wonderful supporter of US Referees, and this event was no exception. They supplied us with 90 sac pacs to give as gifts to the referees and administrators at the 2008 Olympic Games. The bags were a big hit, with lots of use on the trip to the Great Wall (I hear).

In the photo below Kari, Marlene & Veronica are modeling the great new women's cut polos. We really love them.

Thank you OSI!!!

A Night for Brazil

For most of our Quarterfinal match, Brazil was in full control of the ball and the play over rival Norway. After the first goal was scored on a rocket from Daniela at about 30 yards, you could see the Norwegians lose confidence. That was until the 81st minute when the Brazilian GK (the reserve GK) took down a Norwegian player near the touchline and Norway scored from the resulting Penalty Kick (By the way, any ideas why that was not a red card for DOGSO??). From then we had another 13 minutes of strong play.

Overall, the teams came to play and we as a referee team were able to control the game with voice and whistles rather than cards. I am really proud of my crew and honored to have worked this Olympics with Veronica & Marlene.

I am hoping you are following along with the USA WNT and saw that after 4 hours they too prevailed, in this case over Canada. That being said the USA women’s referee crew will more than likely not be eligible for a semi-final. As a good AR knows, we’ll just have to wait and see for the future.

Thank you everyone for all your support. It truly means a lot to us. Best from Beijing –
Kari

quarter final assignments

Tonight we received the quarterfinal assignments. Our crew was assigned the match in shanghai at 9:00. The match is between Holland and Argentina. It should be a tough match. We leave Friday for a plane flight to Shanghai. We are presently preparing for the match by watching the matches that both teams have played.
Jair and Kermit

Great Wall Of china

Today when we arrived back in Beijing, we were told that we would be heading to the Great Wall of China. This is something that everyone has wanted to do. So at 1:30 we loaded the bus. Kari and her crew could not go since they had to stay back and prepare for there match. So Jair and I took the trip and planned on taking lots of pictures. As we boarded the bus it started raining and no one cared that it was raining since it was a 2 hour bus ride to the WALL. We arrived and it was still raining and it was in one word WOW. For one hour we walked the wet slick wall and took many pictures and saw many of the history of the wall. So enjoy the photos

jair and kermit

Match day Three

Yesterday the game between Ivory Coast vs Australia was a very good game we had 2 cautions and the final score was 1-0. The match was a good match that had lots of action and a few goal line decisions. The assessor was very happy with the performance.

So now we head back to Beijing and await for quarterfinal assignments.

USA in the Quarterfinals....

...and not just the WNT, USA will also have a team officials in the Quarter Finals representing! August 15th Kari, Veronica, Marlene and Dianne (of Guyana) will be the 3rd team for Brazil v Norway.

This is bound to be an exciting match. Brazil is on a hot streak, winning their group in the first round, in fact, scoring a hat trick yesterday versus Nigeria. Norway, as you may remember, is the team that beat the USA in the opening match 2-0.

Everything is on the line, as the winning team secures a spot in the semi-finals and the losing team returns home.

You'll all be with us in spirit as we work hard to be the best team on the field.

Kari, Marlene & Veronica

Daily Training—What We Do On Our “Days Off”

Many of you must be wondering, what exactly do we do when we are not working on matches. We actually have a tight schedule with many different things incorporated into our daily program. Every non-game day includes physical training. The physical training is scheduled is modified before and after game day to optimize our game fitness. Our fitness training alternates between workouts in the hotel gym and workouts on the field. All training sessions and games are done with a heart rate monitor with the data downloaded and available for our review. The concentration on the heart rate monitors has made us more conscious of the target rate instead of just going out and training as hard as we feel like that day.

Days that involve physical training in the gym are normally followed by a session of mental preparation. In the gym, we do cardio, weight training, and balancing (for injury prevention) exercises. This has also helped with teamwork and cooperation as we are sharing a small number of machines. These workout sessions can be quite a fun experience as many of the women can be quite comical. We will remember the fun times as much as the new exercises.

The mental preparation revolves around learning techniques for relaxation and visualization. There is a high degree of pressure on referees to perform on the matches. We also know that clips are selected from all the matches to be shown to our peers during debriefings and the actions and decisions are used for development purposes. Therefore, learning mental relaxationtechniques and ways to cope with mistakes on and off the field is very useful, as we know that learning to cope with mistakes and on and off the field is a vital tool to becoming a better referee. Initially, this type of mental preparation was a bit unexpected, but at the same time, we see the value in the training as how we deal with internal struggles positively can improve our performance. We feel very fortunate to have a well-rounded training program to help us improve in mind and in body.

Our outdoor physical training varies from day-to-day. Each session begins with dynamic stretching and movements and is followed by the physical training portion, and then followed by practical sessions. In one of our assistant referee oriented sessions, the physical training portion involved sprints from mid-field to the eighteen yard box, jogging to the goal line, side stepping back to the eighteen and sprinting back to midfield. This was followed by a walk across the field and a repetition on the other side of the field. Sprints on both sides of the field constituted one lap. We did 5 laps, rested for 3-4 minutes, and did 5 more. Wow! This was tough considering how hot and humid the weather was. This session was video taped and our fitness instructor took turns running the sprints with different pairs of people to encourage us to run even faster. Being competitive people, this definitely worked to push us. The cool thing was that we were able to run this as a pair because there were times each of us needed to talk the other through the workout to get the right pacing.

The practical sessions have been a really good way to improve the team work with referees and ARs. They have also been good at replicating situations on the field to improve the concentration and decision making of the referee team. We are really grateful that they have focused so much on the decisions made by the assistant referees which give us instant feedback that we cannot get any other way. We have been very pleased with these sessions, as we feel that these training tools are helping us to meet the expectations of a FIFA tournament. We hope to implement these drills at home so that others can also get the benefits of our training.

Finally, we have debriefings in combined group session with all the men and women officials after every game. These sessions can be a bit nerve-wracking as everyone is hoping that they are not shown doing something wrong. It has been inspiring though to see some of the more senior officials volunteering situations in their games that may not have gone the way they hoped so that everyone can learn from them. They’re courage and maturity have shown us some real leadership and given us a great example of behavior at a FIFA tournament.

Veronica & Marlene

Match Day 3

I would like to share with all of you the good news we received today. We will be officiating the third round game between Ivory Coast vs Australia on the 13Th of August in Tianjin. Thank you all for the kind words and encouragement through out our Olympic experience.

Thank you
Jair

Nearing the end of the first round

The final assignments are out for the first round women's matches today.

As you know team USA had Brazil v Germany on the first day of the tournament. We received positive feedback from our assessors and colleagues alike.

You probably figured out we didn’t get a match on the second day (sans post); a nice few days of recovery. And now for the final day of matches in the group stages Kari has been assigned the 4th official of China v Argentina. Marlene and Veronica will be enjoying a few more days of recovery.

Keep your fingers crossed for us for the next rounds of matches.

Go Team USA

Match day one

August 6, 2008
Today we depart for the city of Qinhuangdao, by train the 7 of us are taken to the train station and we are placed in an area and surrounded by security people that do not allow people to enter, then we board and ride the train for 2 hours to the city, with uniformed security people on the train with us and then we were met by more of the event staff for the venue. They take us by police escort to the hotel and we are greeted by the hotel staff, They have people there that present each of us with flowers and a ovation as we enter the hotel people are standing on the second floor. And then we are taken to our room and we enjoy dinner in the hotel.
Match day
We depart the hotel at 5:30 for a 10 minute trip. The bus has a police escort that radios ahead we are coming and they stop all traffic at any intersection to ensure we arrive without any problems. People are standing on the streets as we pass by watching us. The first game is going on as we enter so we head to the locker room and begin to prepare for the match. We begin to change and put on the belts for the communication device we have to help each other, put the device in the belts and the earpiece taped on our face and neck to keep it from moving around. Game went very good ended in a tie and we had one caution and one send off.It was very HOT and HUMID!!!!!!!

8-8-08
We travel back to Beijing in hopes of getting to the opening cermonies. As you have read before disappointment set in for our trio. We had to stay in the hotel and watch from the TV. FIFA did not have tickets for us and since Jair had to leave for ShangHai on 8-9-08 FIFA said he had to stay and We were not back when the bus left so we had to stay at the hotel as per directions from the bosses.
So for first match great game great experience great time.
Jair, Kermit

The Games of the 29th Olympics, Official Kick-Off

8-8-08 at 8pm, the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games. If you haven't figured it out by now, 8 is a lucky number in China. And Marlene, Veronica and I were getting a bit of that Chinese luck on Friday. We were one of the few who didn't have match conflicts and were given the amazing opportunity to attend the much anticipated opening ceremonies. We were disappointed all of team USA couldn't be in attendance, but we took plenty of pictures to share.

There is no way in words to describe the feeling of being a part of this awesome spectacle of unity, beauty and human ingenuity. It was one “wow” moment after another and I nearly lost my voice cheering over and over for 5 hours straight. We are now officially part of the Olympic Games and extremely proud of representing team USA.

Enjoy the wonderful photos and feel the Olympic spirit yourself as you experience the games on TV.

First Olympic Match!

We returned to Beijing this afternoon and we are exhausted from travel and last night’s match. As wide eyed first timers, we wanted to share a little bit about our experience.

We are still pumped up from the match and the realization that we are now officially Olympians! As you probably know, the game ended in a scoreless draw. Last night was an incredible experience! Wu Lihe Stadium is a beautiful brand new stadium redone specifically for the Olympics. The crowd in the stadium was quite loud and there were several moments during the match where our communication system was quite useful.

With a long way to go, we were the first crew to depart Beijing. Our fellow referees gave us a send off we will never forget, cheering and clapping for us. It was an unexpected moment of solidarity that reminded us we have a football family rooting for our success. Upon arrival at Shenyang, we went on a short tour of the city and the Government Municipal Square. Many of the city residents take part in physical activities such as dancing, skateboarding, and jump roping on the square. In fact, there were a few thousand people at the square that night. Walking around the square was a perfect activity for us as we had a chance to see a local summer pastime and walking is a good way to loosen the muscles after flying.

We began preparing in earnest for the match by watching part of the World Cup Final from 2007 and discussing styles of play and strategies for dealing with specific situations. The next morning, we continued preparations with a pre-game at the hotel with our Argentinean fourth official. Veronica’s fluency in Spanish really came in handy to avoid misunderstandings in instructions.

We left for the stadium in a bus right behind Brazil and Germany.

While we waited for the bus, the Brazilian men’s team departed to train and watch the match (Ronaldinho walked right past us!). With our police escort, we drove to the stadium while the locals waved.

Entering the stadium brought home the reality of participating in the Olympics. We went through the normal pregame preparations of walking the field and warming up, with the added step of testing the electronic equipment including the communication system, flags, and electronic sub board. We walked onto the field to the cheers of tens of thousands of fans. As the game began, we forced ourselves to ignore the distractions of the crowd and focus on the task at hand. Through the course of the game, we learned when to communicate vital information via the electronic system as well as when Kari was speaking to us and not to a player. At the end of the game, we were all drenched with sweat from the high heat and humidity. Although we were tired, we also experienced the exhilaration of working in a stadium with so many people, officiating the reigning World Cup champion and the runner up, and officiating at our first FIFA tournament. We were very fortunate to work our first game with a referee as experienced as Kari to help us with all the small protocols we never even thought of and calmed our nerves a bit with her confidence.

As we all worked on the first match, we will not have assignments on Aug. 9th. This means that we will be going to the Olympic Opening Ceremony at the Bird’s Nest Stadium. We hear there will be around 15,000 performers who will take part in the ceremony. It will be a spectacular event bound to be one of the best in the Olympic history.

Marlene and Veronica

Happy Birthday Marlene

Today, Monday August 4th is Marlene's birthday. What a wonderful place to spend your birthday - the Olympic Games 2008. FIFA shared with her a wonderful suprise and was met with singing in many different languages. Happy Birthday!

All the assignments are out

Actually all the assignments are out and the USA will be represented by a trio in the Germany v Brazil match on Aug 6th. Yes, the same match up as the final of the Women's World Cup 2007. On Aug. 5th Kari, Marlene & Veronica fly to Shengyang where, on the following day, we'll be officiating in a stadium designed to seat 60,000 people and rumored to be a sell-out!

We are thrilled and can't wait to kick-off this wonderful event with a great performance by the USA officiating crew.

Thank you everyone for all your support - go USA.

Assignments are out!!!!!!!

Match Day one assignments are out.

So the group play begins on Aug 7, 2008 and We were assigned the match between Cameroon and Korea. This match will take place in the City on the coast called Qinhuangdao, At the Olympic Sports Center. seating 32,000. We practiced this afternoon using the communication system, as well as began mental preparation for this match.

We are very excited to represent the USA referee program!!!!!!!!!

It has been a long and exciting day. Starting with training, both fitness and technical, followed by a group mental preparation session with our "team" Psychologist. The goal of this mental preparation session was to learn relaxation techniques in preparation for the upcoming matches

The sun was out and it was hot today, we’ve heard anywhere from 35-40 degrees Celsius (95-100 degrees Fahrenheit). Of course we are also told that is only at about 20 degrees humidity so there is a lot more heat where that came from. It was a bit hazy, but we could see the sun.

With the morning session out of the way, we had an opportunity to take an optional trip to the Forbidden City in the afternoon. This time we were able to go in. A huge and amazing facility. First used as a palace in 1368, it covers 720,000 square meters. (Yes, I bought a map with these fun facts).

Tonight was the night of the official FIFA Banquet (the first opportunity for us to sport our new Olympic “uniforms”) so we kept our touring to a manageable time. Many of FIFA’s most important people, as well as some representatives of the IOC were in attendance at tonight’s dinner. It was an enjoyable meal with over 200 people in attendance. Everyone looked great in their blue and white suits.

We are headed off to bed. Any questions just let us know….

Communication System

This afternoon we had a meeting regarding the Communication System, which we'll be using for the Olympics. Since only about 1/2 of the referees have used it before, we got a brief overview of how it works an some tips in its use. Each referee was then given their own system to manage for the duration of the tournament. In the attached photo you can see the bag with all the equipment. The belt in which the receiver goes around the referee/ARs waist, the receiver, the microphone/headpiece and for the 4th official the "push to talk" button. I also added my referee shoe to the photo in order to give you a sense of scale (and I don't wear size 12). For the ladies this device takes up most of the torso and you can see the size of the receiver. However in my experience at the Women's World Cup in 2007 it was very handy and although not comfortable it did not interfere, but rather offered opportunities for assistance for the referee crew. I am glad we are using the system again. With this device, the key is to keep all communication short and sweet. We'll let you know our experiences with the communication system throughout the event. We'll start by testing it out as a team in training tomorrow.

One Addition

In addition to my Aug 1st post, I nearly forgot one other piece of advice we recieved regarding beating jet lag and staying healthy. The suggstion was to only eat food from the hotel, not any from the street. This is one piece of advice I'm just not sure I understand!

off to training

Bright and early every morning we wait in the lobby of our hotel for our transportation to arrive to take us to our training sessions. Our credentials are a requirement every time we depart our hotel for security purposes. Today our training sessions were on penalty kick, offside, and assistant referee involvement. The penalty kick session was about the decisions of the referee when attackers and defenders encroach the penalty area. The offside and AR involvement came hand and hand with our session. Our instructors let us know when AR's should and shouldn't be involved. Our daily sessions last about two hours.

We want to thank all of you for the kind words and support through our Olympic experience.

Acclimatized is an important process at any major tournament and travelling half around the world requires extra care. As we learned today in our referee seminar some of the best tools to beat jet leg are to begin operating in the new time zone, spend time in the environment and light exercise. So, we took a 40 minute walk this morning to start the process (more strenuous activities begin tomorrow) and look what we found....

Arrival and 1st day

Hello all
Travel for Jair and I was good we had a pleasant flight. When we arrived we then went through accreditation, this was interesting since my middle name was left off of mine and since my passport has it I was held up along with a 100 other people. Jair gets through in about 5 minutes; it takes me about 30 minutes. Then it is off to the hotel and then some time to get familiar with the hotel.
1st day
Most of us were up at 4:00 since we are not on this time zone yet and then breakfast at 7:00 and we went for a walk through the city to see some sights and the Tian am district. This walk was about 1 hour and then back to hotel for a tour and explanation of the particulars. Then lunch and introduction meeting. Then we went for another walk around the area.
Now it is time to rest. 10:00 Pm
kermit, Jair