[smginnis]

6th Grade Girls Tournament Game, A1 shoots and "fades" into a still defender, misses her shot, and falls to the ground. B1 gets rebound, fast breaks toward her basket, and misses her layup. After the first miss layup, I notice that A1 is still crying on the floor in the back court near her basket. After an offensive rebound (or 2) and missed layups, team A gets possession and we blow the play dead to attend to A1 who still underneath the other basket.

In between the 10 seconds I noticed that the girl was on the floor (indicated by screaming parents) and we blew it dead, I was I was struggling with blowing the whistle right away just in case the girl was having a heart attack/stroke vs. dealing with a coach who would definitely get on me for stopping play at that point.

Of course, I took hell from the parents with such comments like "you're going to get players hurt on there by not blowing your whistle.."

I agree that safety comes first, but there are other things to consider before just stopping play.

Another tangible is that the "injured player" is a 6th grade girl who had been "injured" a couple times during this game already. I was confident that she didn't have a severe injury, but obviously can't prove that either way without stopping play.

Is there a hard line on when to stop play? How would it change in youth vs. High School?