The game of soccer has seen unprecedented growth all levels throughout the world, including Canada. However, the game within British Columbia provides unique challenges such as, the geographical make up of our Province and the harmonization within our referee development program.  The establishment of a recognized structure for referee development, which realigns the development path to more appropriately dovetail into the CSA National Referee Program, is the ultimate goal of the BC Soccer Referee Program.

To address the landscape of the referee program, BC Soccer established the Regional Referee Coordinator Program, which was developed to provide referees a key contact individual within each region of the province, to monitor, support development, and promote refereeing within that region.  At the time of inception, there were no full-time dedicated Referee Development staff members within the BC Soccer organization.  We are pleased that over the years we have identified the need for referee specific staff which came to fruition with the hiring of a full-time Referee Development Coordinator, Jose Branco, to support this essential area of development.

“I am pleased to be the Referee Development Coordinator within the association and am thankful to our current list of Regional Referee Coordinators for their continuous support and dedication to refereeing.  In my time with the association, I have had the opportunity to work with a number of dedicated, referee specific, individuals outside the RRC Program, who have requested that they become involved with this program.” Jose Branco.  This request lead to a transparent review of the Regional Referee Coordinator Program and it was determined that having only one individual per region may not be the best situation to service all the referees within that region.

The majority of individuals  working to development referees, are outside the RRC Program, in Head Referee or Referee in Chief positions within the various clubs throughout the province.  We are therefore pleased to announce that we are moving to a club based Head Referee model, much like the rest of the world. 

We request that if you are involved with a club / district association and wish to have your name listed as the Head Referee please contact Kelly Batke, our Communications Coordinator at kellybatke@bcsoccer.net  

Thanks and congratulations to all Regional Referee Coordinators on their successes as a BC Soccer Regional Referee Coordinator.