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Old Tue Oct 07, 2008, 01:55pm
OmniSpiker OmniSpiker is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 96
Let's try this answer...

***background: story time***

JOV 14's

I'm R1 and after three serving order, both teams made subs and have completely become disorientated. I suspected an out of rotation on now serving team. Neither coach are sure of where their players are at, receiving is now playing three middle hitters - essentially one outside hitter got subbed for a middle hitter - who then proceeded to take up middle position. Current middle is now confused and sort of takes outside hitter spot. Which was not apparent to me. So serving team jumps two serving order, of which I was not aware. I asked score keeper and R2 to verify the line up and both said that everything was okay. I'm a little confused but proceed. There was two turnovers since and now the serving team is using the same server again. Okay, it's very apparent to me now, so I asked both teams to stand at base positions for a line up check. I get blank stares from everybody - including both coaches, who then now look stupidfied. I get down, go look at the scoresheet to find out who's the proper server. What do both teams do, they decided to huddle and chat amongst themselves. Scorekeeper did not track who's serving at all, but only counted score. Obvious there's no good known information except the original line up. I get furious now and tell both coaches to get their players on the court into home base positions. We're on serve rotation five. I step onto court manually put each person into correct line up, by asking which position they are suppose to play. Now that's where the three middle hitters come in and coach admit to submitting the wrong line up and tried to sub to fix the line up, only to ended up messing it up more. The other team, well merely got shuffled themselves after substitution and forgotten their line up order becuase they normally started with the setter in front but this time started with their setter in the back. Well I wasted eight minutes on that and really had to laughed at both teams - of which were said to be high caliber, high costs teams.

Anyway, I didn't not penalize either team on score...just had them play it out from that point on. I don't know if they were testing me, but I had to do two more line up checks to finish off the first set...The second and third sets went smoothly.

I thought I didn't know what I was doing and we really do take the "let them play" philosophy to extent, but I got a few applaude from some parents and I got quite a few more ugly faces made at me. Personally if the participants don't understand the W or W+ pattern or home base positions, they need to sign up for community volleyball instead of traveling volleyball. Likewise I'm not proficient at scorekeeping, but I can handle score flipping just fine and at least would know which serving rotation we're at. Good scorekeepers are rare commodity on officiating teams.

***

So maybe "let them play" till V team gets to serve and then serves. At which point the score becomes solidified, and then all the line up check and correct placement of players can be verified. It's a poor excuse to fix several compounded mistakes, and would be the last resort to officially seal it. If there's gonna be a delay, make the delay as short as possible to minimize upsetting everyone. Of course not everyone one would be happy with this decision, but owning up to mistakes takes a lot of humility.
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