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3 Ways Youth Sports Leaders Can Recruit Referees

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Tom Bobadilla has been the National Referee Program Administrator for AYSO (@AYSO_Soccer) since 2009, leading AYSO's referee program.

Here, Bobadilla acknowledges the difficulty of recruiting referees, largely because of the perception of referees as targets for yelling and screaming. AYSO overcomes this, he says, by enforcing "zero tolerance for negativity toward referees," providing a great deal of training and emphasizing the role referees can play in contributing to youth development through sports.