FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Adolescence is tough enough, with teachers and parents bossing you and the constant dramas of whether your classmates like you.

So why take a job where your every move upsets half of the people around you?

Well, Fred Dreibholz and others like money, love sports and have found a way to connect the two. And if they don't have thick skin, it's going to thicken quickly.

Dreibholz, 13, is one of about 200 referees in the Soccer Association of Boca Raton, Fla., most of whom are high school or middle school students, who want a part-time job with flexible hours - and found their ideal one involves a striped shirt and a whistle.

He makes about $40 for three Saturday games, and the irony is a bonus: now he has the authority over the adults. That's because - surprise! - it's the parents and coaches that can get riled up; the 9- and 10-year-olds he officiates are compliant.

"I try to block out the parents, and when the coaches yell, I either walk away or tell them it would be better if they just coached their team," says Dreibholz, an eighth-grader at St. Joan of Arc in Boca Raton. "But almost everybody is really nice, which is good because I was pretty nervous when I started."

Referee assignors - adults who book the officials for the rec leagues, middle school and high school sports - say they are turning more toward young people to help a sagging industry.

There's a nationwide sports official shortage, exacerbated by the high dropout rate: of every three new officials, one quits after his or her first year and another after the second year. Most say they don't want the continued verbal abuse or don't have the time.

The middle-school basketball gym is so loud that players can barely hear Jonathan Fernandez blow his whistle. With two groups of cheerleaders stomping on the bleachers - and the noise reverberating - Nova Middle is not a spot for conversation.But Fernandez, 17, cocks his head toward the bench to hear a coach's plea for a foul call. He gives a quick nod, but keeps his eyes on the game.While recreational sports programs across South Florida have long relied on young referees, the shortage of officials for middle and high school sports has brought about an effort to bulk up the roster with teens as well.The Florida High School Athletic Association now has a mentoring program, where a high school senior can work a game with a more-experienced official. There have been 144 signups - about two for each county in Florida.Fernandez, a junior at Flanagan High in Pembroke Pines, Fla., isn't yet eligible for the mentoring program, but he joined the local basketball officials' association at the urging of his stepfather, George "Rusty" Friel, also an official.He started about three months ago with recreation-league games but now calls middle-school basketball. He makes about $400 a week, including $81 for officiating boys' and girls' games back-to-back.

The youth all agree that officiating is not for everybody. There's the split-second decision-making, the second-guessing from the sidelines and the unavoidable attention.The adolescent officials, some of whom lack confidence to begin with, often have even more challenges because they don't want to anger adults.George Gardner, of Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society in Boston, says the young officials go through three stages, beginning with a period when you can barely hear the whistle, "if they call anything at all.""Starting out, it's inevitable that when someone yells at them they'll respond with, 'I'm doing the best I can,''" says Gardner, also president of a 1,500-player soccer club in Massachusetts. "Then it will be, 'I called it the way I saw it.' Then the third response, once you've gotten confident, they say, 'It happened the way I called it.''"

The officials grow in places other than their bank accounts, says Melanie Rogers, 15, of Boca Raton.Rogers says her four years officiating soccer has made her a better player. She made the varsity team at Pope John Paul II High as a freshman.She also understands better how players can be more productive to their teams. Last week, she had to yellow-card a girl in the under-12 league who yelled at her team, "What in the hell are you guys doing?!"For many officials, it's their first job experience, says Debbie Ewing, who assigns games to Rogers, Dreibholz and the rest of the league, about 80 percent boys."We treat it as, 'This is a job and I'm your employer,''" Ewing says. The organization holds training sessions every two weeks, and the officials must bring their planning calendars to each meeting to obtain assignments.And before they even pick up a whistle, most officials must take rules tests and training classes. After the games start, a supervisor of officials often will roam the fields, reminding the teens to always use their arm signals when making a call and to blow the whistle with authority.The moments on the field can provide some with positive momentum for the rest of their lives, says Dan Doyle, executive director of the Institute for International Sport in Kingston, R.I."They learn conflict resolution and how to deal with unpleasant situations," says Doyle, who is working on a book, The Encyclopedia of Sports Parenting. "But refereeing also puts them in a position of leadership, and that carries on no matter what field they enter afterward."