NTFC Fall Challenge-Reflection

For the most part the Fall Challenge was a fairly well run event this past weekend. I know at High Point there were some issues with a lack of refs Saturday night, but that is hard to completely place on the tournament.

Having teams travel from Fort Worth for Friday evening 6:30 games was a bit stressful to meet a game time arrival even with leaving Keller round 4 PM.

There was pretty good communication and there were a good variety of teams to watch. Plus not many tournaments these days actually still hand out trophies to each player that places.

I only observed one big issue and unfortunately it was a result of an overly worked center ref and a first year D2 Classic team that unfortunately demonstrated an extremely low level of class on this occasion. From parents swearing at opposing players, to coaches cursing at opposing coaches and giving the opposing coaches the finger throughout the game, to the head coach telling both the AR and our players who went over to shake hands after a brutally physical game to "Get the F@[# away from our bench"

The center ref did not help much as he was very inconsistent in his foul calling (6th game in a row apparently). At one point he blew his whistle 12 times in a 5 minute time span, then later went almost 7 minutes without any calls when game was getting rougher.

Overall, this was a good event I would certainly recommend to other teams in the future.

Sorry to hear of your bad experience with that team. I can't say I am surprised.

First year D2 CL team? NTFC? Host team?? Can't really see Andro or Toshack behaving this way. Giving the finger and growling angry remarks. Wow.

WTH Happened? Who went BS Crazy at the tournament?

@FanOfSon you have always been a very reasonable person so it must have a been a real "barn burner" for you to mention it.

I thought the agreement for NTX is that our D2 teams are supposed to be developing their skills and playing quality soccer so they can advance into D1 (At which time they will forget all the good things they have learned and play only to win or to put a shoulder on someone... )

Any more insight as to why the bad behavior would be helpful since our D2 teams need to focus on their game quality and not get involved in any soccer hijinks at least until they promote to D1 where it's ok to fly the Jolly Roger at full mast.

Will agree . the refs had NO clue what was the difference between Physical good defense and a foul from a poor angle . Boy got called for beautiful separation plays that Pepe would appreciate . There is a reason they are calling games at this level .