By Anonymous

I love playing sports as much as the next person, but when teams are treated unfairly, then the sports are not about having fun anymore. I am talking about REC Sports here at the University of New Haven. I play on one of the sports teams here and my team and I have noticed some things that need to change in the world of REC Sports. But it is not just my team that has noticed these things, but several of the teams that are frequent participants.

First, some of the refs don’t call things that the players are even pointing out to be wrong. For example, during handball when someone obviously steps into the crease, it doesn’t get called when even the players say something. For people that don’t know the rules of handball, there is a crease that the players can’t step into, because it is like the goalie’s zone. When a player steps on or in the crease, it is supposed to be a foul against that player. If that player happens to make a goal while stepping on or in the crease, then the goal doesn’t count. This hasn’t happened in just handball but in hockey also. But for hockey games, it was off sides that wasn’t getting called on teams.

Another point is that some of the refs are biased towards different teams. This could be for two different reasons; either the ref is refereeing for his/her team or a ref just does not particularly liking a certain team that is playing. For example, my team played against a certain ref’s team, and during the game, there were no calls against the referee’s team. Instead, everything was called against our team. We even lost the game because of some of the unnecessary calls that were made throughout the game. The referees should not be able to referee their own teams, because it is unfair and biased against the teams that are playing against that particular team.

Also, there have been numerous amounts of times that a certain ref has refereed my team, and every time he/she does, there are no calls whatsoever. They are so obvious to all the players on both teams.

Thirdly, the new refs and the old refs don’t know all the same rules this is partly because the rules change from one year to another. The refs that have been referring for a few years go back to the old rules and not to the current rules, so during the game the calls get mixed up between the new and old refs and almost all of the time with the old refs winning the argument all of the time. Also, the new refs only have rule books for last year’s rules and not the current rules.

My next complaint is that there should only be three referees to a sports team instead of the usual five, because of the simple fact that the refs referring the game will not call things against their friends. This makes it unfair to teams that have one or no refs on their team, because most of the calls will almost always go in favor of the team with more refs.

Continuing on this topic, the refs that are playing in a game should not be the ones allowed to write up the sheets at the end of the game, because then the ref that is playing will give a different REC rating as opposed to how the ref watching the game would give. This also shows that the referees that are refereeing the game can’t do their job correctly if a ref from a team writes up the finally scores and REC rating.

The way the scores are calculated for the Charger Cup is also unfair and a topic to discuss, because the pro teams are getting more points than a semi-pro team. A team, signed up to be pro, can lose every game, but will still receive the same amount of points as if that team won a game in the semi-pro. Teams that know that they can’t play against certain teams in pro will go down to semi-pro, having no chance at every winning the Charger Cup. There needs to be a way for the teams that play semi-pro to have a chance at winning the championship for a certain sport. Additionally, some teams play in semi-pro just to win every game by a land slide. This is unfair to the teams that just play to have fun and who possibly want to win a few games.

Lastly, the REC rating is rigged because if a team knows a referee personally, then their REC rating will be higher than it would be if someone outside the game gave the REC rating. The REC rating is built up to be this really big and important part, but in reality, it doesn’t matter, especially if some of the refs never give out the correct REC rating to teams.

To conclude all of my thoughts, I would like to point out that my team makes mistakes just like the next team, but when things only get called against one team, it becomes frustrating. Now it’s not about having fun anymore, like it should be. Things need to start changing, because it is getting a little ridiculous, especially if people come out to play a fair game and they are not getting the chance at a fair game. Some of the refs are biased and they all need to start playing by the rules.