December 2025 Newsletter

Merry Christmas – Happy Hannukah – Happy Kwanzaa … The Best of the Yuletide Season!

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CARFU Referee Society Offseason 2025-26

The elves have been busy at work adding events to the CARFU RS Google Calendar. These are some dates you don’t want to miss! Use the link to view and copy events to your personal calendar to see everything that’s coming up. Here are some specific dates to note:

• Banquet – It’s official. We will be holding our annual Banquet on Friday, February 20, 2026. This will be the evening before the MWRRS Annual General Meeting. The venue has not yet been determined, but it will most likely be in the Rosemont area.

• Annual General Meeting – The CARFU RS AGM will be held right before the MWRRS meeting on Saturday, February 21, 2026. We will start no later than 9:00am. We will have an election for the Vice President/Secretary position (currently held by David Zaccaria). In addition, the board is supported by a number of appointed positions including Referee Development and Retention Officer (RDRO), Referee Recruitment Officer (RRO), Referee Assignments Officer (RAO). If you are interested in applying to any position or just donating some of your time to help out the society, please email president@carfu-rs.com with your proposal before the meeting. Further details for the banquet and elections will follow.

• *MANDATORY Meeting* 😁 – We will have a mandatory, in-person meeting in March. The purpose will be two-fold:
  1. We will talk through law applications and game management. We want to set standards for CARFU RS. We often hear from coaches about issues with consistency. While we can’t standardize a subjective job, there are certain aspects we can set minimum expectations for. The aim is to provide our customers with a better, more consistent experience week to week.
  2. We will run an official Bronco test! The Bronco Test is a hard-aerobic running assessment where participants have to complete a sequence of shuttle runs over 60m, 40m and 20m for five sets. The participants’ aim is to complete the test in as quick a time as possible. Here is a link to the RFU’s description with standards for level 5-10 referees (up to C2). The test will provide each referee an understanding of how their fitness compares to their grade. For those referees with promotion ambitions this will provide you with a record of your scoring that you need for higher level matches. Stay fit over winter or start your training now. We are waiting on information regarding another event before we can confirm the March date. But we should have that soon.

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Here is a message from the CARFU RS Treasurer, Sydney Ramgolam, regarding ArbiterPay:

Since launching the new payments platform in August, 40 out of 57 referees and coaches have registered with Arbiter Pay, enabling a more streamlined payment process. With the new platform, all referees were paid within two weeks of the end of each month from September through November. The only exception was August, when I was delayed by about a month during the initial rollout phase.

For contrast, manually adding a PayPal or Zelle recipient and transferring funds requires multi-factor authentication if doing more than a couple transactions a day and typically takes about 10 minutes per transaction. Only 11 transactions were processed via PayPal and 30 via Zelle this Fall! That’s only 8 hours of manual payments processing!! I can only imagine what Don and Chawn were dealing with in seasons past.

I’ve also been working with Laura throughout the season to tighten our coordination, and a couple weeks ago, we met with Amelia to cross-train and share some of our learnings. This winter, I’ll be documenting the new process and reaching out to Arbiter about some desired improvements. For this reason, we are delaying the full rollout of the platform to teams to ensure a smooth and efficient experience for everyone involved.

While there are still some kinks to work out, the progress with ArbiterPay is promising and lays a strong foundation for future improvements. I encourage anyone who has not signed up to please do so – see how here. And if you have feedback on how the rollout went, feel free to email me directly. Thank you all for your patience and cooperation as we continue to enhance the payment experience.

–
Sydney Ramgolam
treasurer@carfu-rs.com  

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A big weekend of education is planned for the weekend of January 31 – February 1. All courses will be held at Taft High School’s Varsity Campus at 6530 W Bryn Mawr Ave, Chicago, IL 60631. On the menu:

• L2 Referee Course – The L2 referee course is most important for referees that want to improve their competency to manage games at higher levels. It is for L1 referees who have refereed for at least a year or more. It is a two-day, 16 hour in-person course, which explores further topics such as positioning, advantage, materiality, and other techniques to advance as a referee. This course is more involved than the Level 1 with respect to pre-coursework, the in-person clinic, and post-course field test in a live game. I can think of at least 5 or 6 referees in our society that should enroll. CARFU RS will reimburse you once you have completed all the requirements and assignments. Register early as I suspect there will be high demand for this. You have ambitions?? You need this.

• L1 Referee Training – Okay, okay! So this one may not be for you because you have already done it. But we always need more referees and when players and coaches get the bigger picture, it helps build a smoother, more respectful relationship between players, coaches and refs. It also helps if they need to referee their own club at practice or a second side match. So, if there are players or coaches that you know well, why not reach out one-on-one and invite them to check out this course? Let’s grow the game together.

• L1 and L2 Coach (of players) Training – Like players building respect for refs, refs can help build an understanding for what the players are being coached. You also need a coach certificate if you want to help coach a club. There may be something in this for you after all.

PLEASE – after you register yourself – promote these to your community both here in Chicago and across the country.

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On December 6 Rugby Illinois held their Winter AGM. It was an excellent meeting with consensus on all parts. Teams are working on their schedules now. We asked that they submit their referee requests by the end of January so we can issue invoices and collect payments before their first matches. We’ll see if they get so organized.

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Thank you to Amelia and the Special Events Committee for putting together a great event at the Kaiser Tiger on the Thursday evening before the All Blacks vs Ireland match. Special thanks to John Stevens for leading our panel discussion with our international compatriots and putting together a great set of questions. It was a great conversation.

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Are we climbing the Social ladder?  OMG Yes!  Our new Facebook page has seen our follower count jump over 275%. That 53 followers IRL! Be sure to like us to get that number up!! Tell your BFF’s that they’ll have FOMO if they don’t. Our Instagram page is also poppin’ with 83 followers! Crazy! Feel free to tag us when you post photos and new content. IYKYK. If you’re having any trouble, contact Amelia Vojt RN at recruitment@carfu-rs.com.

And if you made it this far…thank you. I’m grateful AF. Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals!