[Mark Padgett]

Our local kids rec league (grades 3-12) has kept the "old" rules regarding the coaching box (we don't allow one) and having timeout requests coming only from players on the floor. There's been a strong movement by many of the Board members (almost all of whom are also coaches) to allow head coaches to request timeouts from the bench. The reason we kept the old rule is that each year, we add some new HS kids to our referee roster and we feel it's difficult for them to take their attention away from the game on the floor to recognize a TO request from the bench (and have to verify it's coming from a HC, especially since the HC is seated). Many of our refs are in their first, second or third year and are HS students.

Those of us on the Board who are refs want to keep the rule the way it is but it looks like, unless we can come up with a more convincing argument, it's going to be changed for the coming season. I would appreciate any input from you guys that we could use to try to convince the other Board members to leave it alone. The main point of the coaches is that it's sometimes hard to get the attention of a player on the floor during play to get him or her to request the timeout.

Thanks. BTW - this is a purely recreational, not competitive, league. One suggestion one of the refs had was to allow the rule change from the 7th grade up and keep it at 6th grade and below. Most of our experienced refs work the upper grades and we have lots of rule differences for the different grade levels already, so it wouldn't be anything "new".