Certification Requirements

There are two parts, and you do them in order: online coursework first, then one in-person field session. Together they get you a Grassroots referee certification from US Soccer — the entry-level license that lets you officiate youth and adult recreational and competitive matches, as a referee or assistant, depending on your age and experience.

You must be at least 13 to register at all.

Part one: online coursework

Done at your own pace in the US Soccer Learning Center — start it, stop it, come back later, your progress is saved. It’s several separate modules, not one long sitting:

• Online Referee Course Modules — 4.5 hours
• First-Time Referee Quiz — 45 minutes
• Laws of the Game Update — 20 minutes
• Introduction to Safe and Healthy Playing Environments — 1 hour
• SafeSport training — 1 hour, only if you’re 18 or older

That’s roughly 6.5 to 7.5 hours total, depending on your age. Where this account lives, and why the email address on it matters, is covered in Your US Soccer Learning Center account.

Part two: field training

You can’t attend this until the online coursework is completely finished. It’s an in-person session, takes about three hours, and there’s no additional cost beyond the course fee.

What you walk away with

A Grassroots certification valid through December 31 of the year you certify in — a calendar year, not a season, which matters more than it sounds like it does. What that means for the following year is covered in Staying certified year to year.

Certifying doesn’t include the background check most adult referees also need — that’s a separate step, covered in Background check and SafeSport — and it doesn’t cover finding or booking the course itself, which is in Registering for a Course.

Your certification itself lives in the US Soccer Digital Learning Center (USSLC), not in RefTown or whatever platform your assignor uses. That’s where you complete the online coursework, and it’s the record every assigning platform checks before it will let you work a game.

RefTown confirms you’re certified by matching your Learning Center record against your platform profile, using your email address along with your name and date of birth. Some organizations will accept a match on email alone; get it wrong and there’s nothing else to fall back on. This is the single most common avoidable problem a new referee runs into, and it’s the reason a brand-new, fully-certified referee can show up in RefTown as inactive with no assignments possible.

If that happens to you, it isn’t a lost cause. Edit your profile on whichever platform to use the same email as your Learning Center account (or the other way around), and allow a few hours for the match to catch up.

You can check the result any time: click your name in the top right of RefTown, choose My Profile, and look under My Qualifications. That’s also where RefTown will show your certification once it’s synced correctly.

If you’ll be working for more than one organization — a tournament running on RefInsight, say, in addition to your regular league on RefTown — register with that same address there too.

See Staying certified year to year for what happens to this account when you recertify.

What you have to complete depends on your age, and it’s built into the online coursework — you don’t file it separately.

If you are 18 or older, the online coursework includes a SafeSport training module (about an hour) and a background check. The background check carries its own fee on top of the course fee, charged as part of registration. Both have to be on file before you’re shown as certified.

If you are under 18, you skip both. SafeSport and the background check aren’t required for minors. Instead, everyone — regardless of age — completes a separate module called Introduction to Safe and Healthy Playing Environments (about an hour), which covers the same ground at a level appropriate for a referee who’s a minor themselves.

The rules around how you’re allowed to communicate with coaches, assignors, and mentors if you’re a minor are separate from this, and covered in Becoming a Referee.

For what the rest of the online coursework and field session involve, see What certification involves. For why the email address you use matters here, see Your US Soccer Learning Center account.

Certification runs on the calendar year, not the soccer season. Your badge is good only through December 31 of the year it covers — it does not carry over into the next year, no matter when you earned it or when your season ends.

That catches people off guard once a year: if your first games are in January, you need that new year’s certification in place already. Last year’s badge does not cover a January game, even though the season feels like a continuation of the one before it.

Recertifying is done through the same US Soccer Learning Center account you already have, not a new one. The Oregon Soccer Referee Organization posts the current year’s link on its Recertify page; registration for the coming year typically opens mid-summer, months before you’d actually need it, so there’s no reason to leave it to December.

To use the recertify path rather than starting over as a new referee, you need to have held a referee license for at least one of the past three registration years. If it’s been longer than that, ask your assignor or OSRO which path applies to you.

Whichever path you’re on, use the same email address on the Learning Center that you use on your assigning platforms — see Your US Soccer Learning Center account for why that matters more than it looks like it should.