In the US, only the youngest games have teenage refs (U10 and younger). And even then, it is only common in the lower competitive tiers. Competitive travel/select league games generally have adult refs (national and regional leagues).

The money is pretty decent for two hours of work (and you can work games back to back to back).

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2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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beart 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Your comment implies the youth refs are the exception, but the VAST majority of play are at these lower competitive levels, and it is FAR more common to have youth or inexperienced refs than otherwise.

	▲	mbreese 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I’m saying that when you get to have games involving kids older than 10, that having teenage refs is more uncommon. In my area, there are a number of leagues. Only one has a large number of teenagers in the ref pool and they only are center refs for the youngest players. For the more competitive leagues, you almost never have a ref crew made up of only teenagers. Here, young refs are generally protected by having older refs as part of the crew. There is a whole system behind referee scheduling that most people don’t know about. (Also, this about soccer in the US, I have no idea how other sports schedule their officials)