The sight of a bright card being flashed as a result of a foul may give adults a wave of nostalgia back to when they were young playing sports-except this time, one thing is different: the card is purple.

New to the 2023-2024 soccer season, CIF has created the purple card in the face of an increase in unsportsmanlike behavior on the Central Coast and nationally.

Since “sportsmanship is the foundation for interscholastic sports and defined through the essential elements of respect, responsibility, fairness, and good in high school soccer’s governing body’s,” (California Interscholastic Federation), the solution to end the behavior became the CIF-CCAA athletic board’s main concern last year, 2022-2023.

Partnering with the local referee association, CIF created this new way to control inappropriate behavior shown by adults/spectators on the sidelines, including parents and team officials.

During a soccer game, when a referee identifies behavior that is deemed inappropriate, they will flash the purple card to the spectator as a warning. If the behavior continues, then the ref will show another purple card to the spectator, who will be removed from the game.

So far this 2023-2024 soccer season, there has been a purple card during a girls varsity soccer game played at Parish Field against Orcutt Academy.

“The parent didn’t like what the referee was calling so he was yelling disrespectful comments at him. The ref finally saw it as too much and gave him a purple card,” girls varsity assistant coach Ken Hammond said.

This new installment to the soccer season will be the first step to fix the issues of misconduct and let the players indulge themselves in the game with no distractions.