Quote:
Originally Posted by BryanV21
Throwing something on the court and cheerleaders coming onto the court are different things. Cheerleaders are allowed on the court during certain situations, as you pointed out... But throwing anything on the court is never allowed. So I don't agree that the two situations can be treated the same.
If you deem cheerleaders as bench personnel then I can support a technical foul, but the fact is this situation is different and falls on the officials to make a decision that needs to be addressed but is not made clear by the book.
I certainly believe things could have been handled differently, like taking care of the situation at the time it occurred, but I believe some game management was necessary as well.
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Sigh, one cannot “manage” a situation which has unfairly impacted one team nor can one make up a way of addressing it when a remedy is clearly provided for in the rules. (Note to BillyMac: this is why 2-3 is not applicable here.)
Cheerleaders are not bench personnel. They are team supporters and it is crystal clear which team they represent. They are spectators with the special privilege of entering the court at specified times. If the do something which unfairly impacts the game, then the NFHS rules provide a remedy. As I’ve already stated the proper remedy is a technical foul and BillyMac has now posted two play rulings supporting that. You will find nothing stating to issue a replacement FT. Why? Because that’s not how the rules deal with misbehaving spectators.
One of the casebook rulings demonstrates that game management can be informed to put a stop to the improper behavior, and that can be done without the penalty of a technical foul, if no negative impact to the game has occurred. However, if fairness has been infringed, then the only way to restore that balance is to charge the technical foul.
So if the band is playing while the opposing team has the ball, play can be halted and the illegal behavior can be stopped without any serious injustice having been suffered, but if a team loses a FT opportunity or a wide-open layup near the end of a quarter because cheerleaders run out onto the floor, you need to ask yourself would it be fair to just have game administration tell them to not do that again? When an opportunity has unfairly been lost, the technical foul is the proper manner to restore the balance.