A Long Day's Journey

Today I attended out annual soccer referee chapter meeting in Omaha. As I'm sure almost all of you know already I referee college soccer in the fall, and have to go through a series of meetings and physical torture (they call them fitness) tests. Today was the first of the meetings. It's in Omaha, because I'm part of the Great Plains referee association. 75% of the referees that belong to this group live in Nebraska along the I-80 corridor, and then 24% live in the North part of the chapter along the I-90 and I-29 corridors until about half way between Sioux City and Omaha, and a couple other in the middle that live in smaller towns. And then there is 1% that live in the extreme north part of the chapter, that would be me. The closest school I can referee is Dakota Wesleyan, and the next is South Dakota State, and then, it's 130 miles or further to referee the next closest school. It gets to be some miles, but I'm well on the way to my second season of college soccer. Amazing that spring is also less than 6 weeks away! It's time to start planning for fall again, and that's hard to believe.