Becoming a referee isn’t something you do on a whim! It often starts with the desire to help out your club. Calling games for the juniors is easy—it doesn’t require much training, and the crowd is usually friendly. (Well, sometimes a few parents can get a bit heated.)
Then, if the enjoyment remains, the desire to train kicks in. You have to take courses, pass exams, and then get out there and practice. That’s when you experience the serious side of officiating—the absolute demands of players and coaches who expect human perfection in decisions and actions they don’t demand of themselves.
After that, passion sets in, and higher-level training and matches reward the effort. That’s when the elite of high-level officiating rub shoulders with national and international competitions. Few make the cut, especially since volunteering has its limits in terms of scheduling and distance.
This path allows you to climb the ranks of the administrative sports hierarchy, as today, the President of the French Federation, Fabien Carrette-Legrand, is a distinguished referee who once led the CNAB (National Arbitration Commission) for a long time, before being succeeded by Ludovic Meillier.
What is the ACFCAM? It’s the French association of multi-sport referees. It performs numerous functions within the refereeing community. Recently, it honored three well-known figures in the tight-knit world of French baseball:
Gilbert LEJEUNE received the ACFCAM Gold Medal
Serge MAKOUCHETCHEV received the ELITE 2020 Trophy
Stéfan LARROQUE received the HOPE 2020 Trophy
Congratulations to them and their energy, which often makes club leaders say: « No refs, no game… »
Photo credit: ACFCAM, Gilbert Lejeune
