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In another post, Dakota said:
After all, what do the NCAA and the NFHS have in common WRT the rules of the game? ANS: The coaches are in control.
This FED bashing is becoming common for you, Tom, and I am somewhat surprised. This is your first year of calling H.S. ball and I wonder why you have to frequently criticize the organization that you now work under.
Your statement that coaches control the FED demonstrates your lack of knowledge (and respect) for that organization. And maybe it is a slap at Emily Alexander in her role as Officials Representative on the NFHS Softball Rules Committee. I dont even think that it is fair to Marty Harrington of GA who represents coaches on the committee. Or to the representatives of the eight national sections of the country that make up the majority of the committee. They come from the State Associations that use these rules; the position is rotated among the four or five states in each section. (The rep for section 5, which includes MN, is Rick Bowden from Topeka, KS.)
Who are these representatives? They are not coaches! They are administrators whose primary function is to serve thousands of high school athletes in their states that compete in thousands of athletic contests each school year. My neighbor recently left his position at a nearby H.S. to move to Lansing to accept a position with our State Association. He was the AD, he had coached; his wife was his varsity Basketball coach; he was also an umpire, calling high school through minor league BB games. Now he is an administrator and maybe someday he could get chosen to sit on a FED rules committee. Would you suggest that somehow he would be coach orientated on the committee?
The FED is a huge national organization, writing the rules for all high school sports (excepting golf and tennis) for nearly all high schools in fifty states (and through linkage for high schools in Canada). I dont know how old it is, but we have been playing high school basketball and football since the early 1900s so we have probably had a national rules organization nearly that long (NCAA began in 1906). A significant point is that NFHS rules are specifically written for youth sports, not adopted from adult rules.
If you wish to focus on a single sport then lets look at softball. ASAs heritage and rules are specifically for adult softball; as recently as twenty years ago youth sports were only briefly mentioned by ASA with rules to cover field sizes and prohibition of metal spikes. By time NFHS entered the softball field it already had in place a youth rules culture that would govern its softball rules design. Some would have us believe that softball rules are just warmed over baseball rules. Perhaps, but as long as I remember there were pages of differences between FED BB and FED SB.
If you want to lay the books out side by side, you will find that the text in ASA rules and FED softball rules is identical in the majority of the book. Where it is different, it is my opinion that the FED book is better with respect to youth ball. ASA, because of its adult orientation, tends to be much harsher in penalty applications. In ASA, if you dont report a legal substitute the player is kicked out of the game. In FED play goes on and the child is not punished for an adults mistake. ASA can extract a harsher penalty for a BOO infraction. And FED provides a greater tolerance for disciplinary issues. It defines both major and minor unsporting conduct and allows the umpire to bench a player for the balance of the current game without ejection and subjecting her to future game penalties.
For the educational process, and the role that high school athletics play in that process, the FED rules are simply better. I am not sure that the NFHS deserves ASA umpires scorn simply because you disagree with an interpretation of a single rule. A rule, BTW, that is identical in both books. The rule states that a B-R is out if she runs outside the three-foot land and, in the judgment of the umpire, interferes with the fielder taking the throw at first base. Thats it! It doesnt say if the batter-runner was created by a hit or D3K or walk, just batter-runner. It doesnt say intentional, just interference with a fielder (not the ball). It doesnt say play; in fact play is not even defined in either book. So you ASA guys have to run through the rulebook, trying to stitch together pieces of rules to support your interpretation. And then blast the NFHS just because they dont agree with your interpt.
As too many have already said here you call the rules according to the way the people who are paying you want them called.
WMB
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