State Cup games

Sorry it's taken me so long to write another post.  Life is not the same with a newborn, that's for sure.

Tomorrow I have the opportunity to work two games, both semi-finals in the club state challenge cup.  The first game I am the 4th for a U15 girls game.  I'm not been a 4th before but I did get to witness a few games this summer at Regionals where we had 4ths.  Given what happened in the Akron-Cal quarterfinal game last weekend I am taking this assignment very seriously.  Here is a thread regarding that quarterfinal game: http://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1604868

The second game is a U16 boys semi-final.  I get to center this one.  The two teams are actually part of the same "club"; however, they are in two different cities about 2 hours apart, Mount Pleasant and Columbia.  I expect a pretty high level match for this.

For me, in situations like this, I tend to get really nervous.  If this were just a regular season game with the same two teams I would be fine.  Just go out and do the games.  But because this is a semi-final, with these kids' whole season riding on this one game, I make myself freak out.  I played HS football, kicker, and did the same thing then.  I thought about it way too much and scared myself to death.  In the back of my mind, though, I know that once I blow the first whistle I will be fine. 

I tend to go into these games telling myself I will do everything I can to not be the focus of this game.  I want to call less and let the game be decided by the players.  Last week in the first round game I called a PK, which turned into the first goal.  Then, right after halftime, there were two penalty shouts by the same team.  Did the kid go down?  Yup.  By the defender?  Yeah.  Was I about to call another penalty?  Hell no!  It would have been a light penalty, not diving, just light, and I was not about to become the ref who gave the winning (and better) team a series of penalties to start the scoring.

Luckily the teams scored within 90 seconds of the no call, making it 2-0.  They scored two more to win 4-0.  Hopefully tomorrow's games will be just like the game last week.

Do you guys focus on particular points of your reffing "game" before "big" games?  Do you change anything going into what you would call a big game?