I’m sure TheRef will appreciate this one. Our end of season U10 tournament championship was between two teams that are very evenly matched and play fast and furious. They played a clean hard match and ended regulation 1-1. After much debate last year when we played a single 5 minute overtime period in the tournament matches (which rarely changed the score), we decided to go straight to shoot-outs like the soccer gods intended. The coaches picked their five and the shootout began.

I was shagging balls behind the goal since there’s a pretty steep drop and our fencing isn’t up yet. So during the kicks I got an excellent view of the ball and the keepers feet. The 3rd kicker for the red team gets up and drills his shot right into the crossbar, giving the blue team the edge in the shootout. No foot movement by the keeper, but the AR had his flag up. Uh-oh. Turns out one of the players on the blue team’s bench said ‘BOO’ loud enough for the center and AR to hear it right as the red kicker was kicking. The blue team got a bench misconduct and the kicker retook his kick and made it, which resulted in a draw and a second shoot out round. Now THAT was a bold (but in my mind absolutely correct) call. In the end the blue team won the second shoot out round anyway – but can you imagine if they hadn’t? Smiley