Brian Hall became a referee at age 13. He earned his FIFA badge at age 31, officiated at a World Cup and numerous major international tournaments, and earned MLS’s Referee of the Year honor four times. But most teens who take up refereeing don’t last very long.

“Are you match fit?” The definition being, you are fit enough to play at a high pace for a full match.

For those of us who grew up as teenage athletes in the 1970s (or earlier), we are familiar with the old “stretching” routine: we typically began a training or pregame session with a series of somewhat contorted movements such as the hurdler’s stretch for the hamstrings, an Achilles stretch, butterfly, and a quadriceps stretch usually done with a partner.

In this day and age, soccer camps come in all sorts of shapes and sizes: skills camps, indoor camps, fun camps, and team camps. And for better or worse, I’ve worked at all of them.

Since when did the postgame (or, in some cases, pregame and halftime, too) snack become the focal point of youth recreational soccer games? And when did it become the latest installment of “Keeping up with the Joneses”?

Amateur sports team travel makes a major impact on the leisure hotel industry in the USA as teams travel to the tens of thousands of tournaments across the country each year.

You’re organized. You’re a good communicator. You’ve run your school auction and served on a plethora of committees. Which is why your child’s new coach has asked you to be the team’s manager for the upcoming fall soccer season. “What do I need to do?” you ask.

Tournaments and hotels — the proverbial love-hate relationship. Directors of tournaments with many out-of-town teams know they cannot live without the hotels, but many wonder at times exactly whose side the hotels are on. If your tournament is not using a sports housing service to handle the hotel responsibilities, and you are a Tournament Director that has a great relationship with every hotel you use in your city, consider yourself lucky.

I’ve had every kind of coach imaginable: great motivators who were not really good tacticians; decent tacticians who were not great leaders; coaches who were good at the game but had weak people skills; and even the quintessential parent-coach, who didn’t really know the game but made it enjoyable for the players and their families.

Imagine this scenario: You’re sitting in a cafe in Switzerland watching Euro 2008. You don’t speak any French, German or Italian, but you are handed the thickest menu you have ever seen. This thing is like 50 pages long. You open it and start flipping through. You have no idea what you’re looking at. To boot, you’re a picky eater. The waiter comes and you point to a random item and hope …