To make the most accurate calls during a soccer match, a referee is told to stay no more than 20 yards from the ball at all times. The only way to do this when the ball whizzes from player to player through 90 minutes of nearly non-stop motion? Run.
Editor’s Note: This article was published in advance of the 2014 men's World Cup in Brazil.
Geiger, who has officiated professionally since 2004, was the first American referee to participate in the World Cup since 2002 when he worked the 2014 World Cup. He partially attributes the honor to a fitness regimen designed to help him keep up with the world’s best players. Geiger competed as a cross country and middle-distance track runner in high school in addition to playing soccer. Until early 2013, he worked as a math teacher at Lacey Township High School, in Lanoka Harbor, New Jersey, before deciding to devote his full attention to officiating. Although his running career doesn’t extend beyond the occasional neighborhood 5K, he remains connected to the sport as an assistant track and cross country coach at Lacey Township.
From that assessment, he builds individualized training programs for every ref employed by the company. According to Hawkey, if you want to be physically ready to ref at the highest level, your body has to be prepared to handle frequent explosive sprints over 90 or more minutes. An additional challenge is that the most critical decisions during a game come when a referee is most tired.
“I’ll throw something in the workout that will absolutely crush Mark because I want to see his response,” Hawkey says. “I will have to check my texts to see how many times he’s cursed me.” “But for me, that’s just your minimum requirement to be a referee,” Hawkey says. “Our standards are quite a bit higher than that.” Those standards include completing the same set of six 40-meter sprints, but with only 10 seconds of recovery instead of the 90 that FIFA requires. Hawkey also emphasizes strength and explosiveness, putting the referees through weight training and plyometrics in addition to the 20 to 25 weekly miles of sprint, fartlek and tempo workouts.
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