Night for illegal kicks!

[Texas Aggie]

Had two illegal kicks tonight (jr. high game). As R, I have to confess that I didn't know the signal offhand, but a quick reference to the cheat sheet by my partner clued me in. Good thing, because a quarter later, we had another one.

The first was a kickoff where they punted. I was a little dismayed that neither other official flagged it, but after I threw the flag, they knew what I had. Coach chimes in "we don't have a tee!!" as if that matters. No big deal, as receiving team declined. Coaches don't like kickoffs and I sort of encouraged a declination.

Second play was in the "I've never seen that before" category. On a kick try, Team B has a jailbreak and one of the defensive players kicked the ball while it was being held by the holder. I flagged it then cleaned up the action of chasing down the ball. I started to get another official to see if he saw the same thing (just because it was weird) when a kid from Team B asks, "can he not kick it, ref?" At that point, no reason to get another view, but then the coach for Team B insists its a dead ball foul enforced on the kickoff. Ahh, no, I explain, as that would give the penalized team too much of an advantage. He said he was going to look it up (I told him to look toward the back of Rule 9 -- NCAA), and I said fine and enforced it half the distance, replay the try.

Double checking when I got home, I saw the "kick the ball held by the opposing team" section. I had missed that exact wording before but I knew the kick was illegal due to Rule 6's explicit kicking restrictions.