Knafl impacts soccer players as official, instructor

DOWNERS GROVE – When Terry Knafl was growing up on the west side of Chicago, he and his friends constantly were playing pickup games in the neighborhood.

No matter what the sport, there were always adults around to supervise and teach the kids how to play the right way.

Knafl played basketball and football at Farragut. He was a quarterback at Knox College, where he was captain his senior year.

After serving in Vietnam, Knafl became a stockbroker and has spent much of his free time since trying to give back to local kids.

The longtime Downers Grove resident has been an IHSA referee since the 1970s, and in 2000 he opened Just for Kicks, an indoor soccer training facility located on the border of Naperville and Plainfield.

“My attitude has always been, especially with the high school sports, it’s about the kids,” Knafl said. “I [was helped by] some nice people when I was young. There were guys that would spend a lot of time with us, so it was always about kids enjoying sports.”

Knafl, 70, started officiating football and basketball before getting involved in soccer when his grandchildren began playing in the 1990s.

Knafl quickly gained a reputation as one of the top high school referees in Illinois. He has officiated three state finals, including the 2011 boys state championship game between Morton and Naperville Central.

“The coaches have a job, just like teachers do, of trying to educate the kids,” Knafl said. “So I try to support that, respect the rules of the game and respect the coaches and what they’re trying to do with the kids.

“You get all those things right, usually things go well in the game. The game is about the kids. A lot of referees are out there and they’re making all the gesticulations and they want to talk all the time.”

Knafl rarely stops the game to argue with coaches or players. He’s always hustling to be in position to make the correct call and controls players during the run of play.

“I’m running up and down the field talking to them and nobody knows that I’m doing that,” Knafl said. “I always try to use verbal stuff away from everybody else to keep kids in line. The idea of the [yellow] card is to control the game. But if I can control it without giving the card, that’s just as important.

“You want the kids to have a good game as much as they do.”

For Knafl, one of the best aspects of being a referee is being in the midst of the action. He has watched hundreds of players who have gone on to college careers. Some, such as Vanessa DiBernardo and Megan Oyster, are currently playing professionally.

Those two trained and coached at Just for Kicks, which Knafl’s family built along with DiBernardo’s father, Angelo, the former New York Cosmos star.

Knafl’s granddaughters, Nikki and Brie Siebert, who later played in college, were among the first to take advantage of the innovative facility, the first in the area with indoor fields that did not use hockey dasher boards.

Nikki now runs the facility’s Lil’ Kickers program. Knafl joined the national program, which teaches soccer to more than 100,000 kids as young as 18 months, in 2007. Currently, there are more than 700 kids younger than 6 enrolled in the program.

“It’s part child development, part soccer,” Knafl said. “It’s neat how they do everything. Everything is set up by child psychologists.

“When they’re 2 years old … you might dribble the ball around pretending you’re swimming in the ocean, and they’ll bring the ball to the dot and that’s an island and you’re safe because somebody saw a shark.

“When they’re 3 [they pretend to be] a giant and use their feet to replant a tree after a storm came through and build a bird’s nest.

“Then by the time they’re 8 or 10, they have the muscle memory to trap the ball.”

Many kids who learned the game at Just for Kicks later had their high school games officiated by Knafl. Some of them work at the facility.

“A lot of the coaches are high school kids,” Knafl said. “There is a curriculum for every class, so if you’re going to be a teacher it’s a good way to learn how to prepare a class.

“It gets them used to evaluating the kids and telling the parents what their kids need to work on.”

Knafl’s officiating career is on hiatus because his wife, Erika, is dealing with health issues. But he still attends as many matches as he can because he loves the game and the players.

“It’s been fun,” he said. “No matter what sport you’re in, it’s a good experience for you.”