A little more than a week after a 17-year-old soccer player punched a recreation-league referee in the head in suburban Salt Lake City, the referee is dead, the player faces charges, and youth sports are left with questions about the seeming rise in severity of assaults on officials.

Ricardo Portillo, the 46-year-old referee, is only the second official in the United States known to have died as a result of referee assault, according to the National Association of Sports Officials. But Barry Mano, the organization’s president, said that many serious assaults went unreported, and Portillo’s eldest daughter, Johana, said her father had been assaulted before, sustaining broken ribs in another on-field attack about five years ago.

To some observers, Portillo’s death is simply the most recent example of a growing problem. Mano said treatment of officials had deteriorated drastically since he began the organization in 1980. At that time, he said, the notion that an official would have insurance specifically against assault was “ludicrous.”

“It wasn’t on anyone’s radar,” he said. “But now it’s part and parcel of what we do, and not a week goes by where we don’t get at least two or three calls with reports of officials being assaulted.”