[stevesmith]

I guess one of the things I really like about lacrosse is also what I really hate....flexibility when administering fouls. It's not like most other sports where there are pre-determined enforcements of fouls. Our general rule of thumb is to let a player work up to the more severe enforcements, but there are always exceptions, and only you as the official can decide when and how to determine those differences. From what you described, that was probably the proper call to make. I was working a tournament last February when a new official on another field caused all kinds of chaos when he called a 3-minute non-release slash just a couple of minutes into the game. Granted I didn't see the play, but I guess he went a little overboard due to all the talk surrounding it the rest of the day. But when the supervisors were talking to him later, they explained that you normally try to follow a progression....start with a one minute releasable, then a one minute non-release, then so on. But to start immediately with the 3-minute non-release left no where to go but ejection.

In the usual course of contact between a defender and the attacking player, accidental slashes do occur and I believe those should be non-release the first time, and maybe even the second time. In your example of the intentional slash, I think you were correct in making it non-releasable. As an example of the other extreme, there was a player tonight who decided he would rather fight than play. He was cross-checked by the defender and that foul was called...one-minute releasable. But then the offended player decided to fight even as the defender tried to make his way to the penalty area, so he was immediately ejected, no questions asked.

The bottom line is that there is no right or wrong answer to your question. As one of our local COC big dogs likes to say..."you're getting paid for your judgement, sometimes you have to earn your money".