Hi. My name is Gary Davidoff and I'm an assistant coach on a girl's U10
travelling soccer team. We've been teaching our girls to play a clean
game of soccer. The use of the body is ok when playing the ball, but
you can't use your body to play the other play (no pushing, holding,
tripping, etc.) However, the refs don't seem to ever call anything
short of violence. We just played in a tournament and our girls were
essentially beaten up by several teams. When we questioned the refs
after the game, their answers were basically noncommittal. Are we
supposed to teach our girls that anything goes. That they should test
the ref and it's ok, as long as the ref isn't calling it. This is
opposite to the beliefs of the coaches on our team. We don't have a
"win at all cost" mentality and believe we should be teaching our girls
to play well, but cleanly. Are we wrong? How do we protect the girls?

Thanks.

Gary Davidoff
gdavidoff@...
United States