[MCBear]

The real problem with the "grace" philosophy is that, in my experience, the coaches know who the officials are who will let them get away with stuff. By the same token, they know who the officials are who make them "toe the line" and know what they are doing so there aren't any snafu's. I had a discussion this past week with a varsity coach of one of the stronger teams in a league that I am assigned to officiate and she was of the very strong opinion that I was one of the few who know the rules and enforce them (which she appreciates and wants done all the time). Unfortunately, I only work one or two of her matches during the season and the other officials who work her matches do not always follow the rules that are in the book. Do I need to say that what she experiences is a lack of consistency from match to match?

That same day, the JV coach at that school messed up her line-up, not once - but TWICE! First, she listed #9 as a starter for Game 1, but #9 was actually wearing #13. In addition, there wasn't a #13 on the roster. I could have let her change the numbers on both the roster and lineup without penalty, but then I would have been ignoring 7-1-1 Penalty 1 and 7-1-2 Penalty 1. So, there was a penalty point given to the visitor since we had to change the home roster after the submission deadline. Then, there was another point given to the visitor because the home line-up had to be changed to reflect reality (and no, we could not take #9 out and put in #13 since they were the same player but 9 was her green jersey and 13 was her white one). So, the visitor got 2 points to start the match.

Then, after the coach submitted the lineup for Game 2, as I was getting ready to check their lineup, she told me that she had put #15 in the starting lineup and the player's number was #10 (again, there was no #15 to put on the floor). So, to start Game 2, they were assessed a LOR and the visitor got the penalty point and the ball.

So, I am hoping that you can see that there is no such thing as a minor administrative error. I don't know of any way to judge the severity of a rules violation. It either is one or it is not. And, if it is a rules violation that is covered, we follow the book.

One of the reasons that we have so much trouble in officiating volleyball is that most of us who officiate it have not played the sport and do not have the familiarity with it that we do with basketball, baseball and/or football. It takes time to develop an understanding of the game, to know what and where we are supposed to be looking during play and to understand the rules that sometimes do not make sense to us even after we read them a million times. Then it takes more time to realize that in volleyball, there are no trivial rules (even if we don't completely agree with those who write the rules each year).

So, for those of us who no longer officiate other sports, but do only volleyball and officiate it on multiple levels and rules codes, it becomes harder to enforce the rules as we know they are written, when others don't.