First one for the year

[MikeStrybel]

We had our 11U draft yesterday (yes, I was suckered into coaching my son's team) and this topic came up. A couple of the coaches are also IHSA officials who attended one of my clinics. When the league director emphasized the safe slide rule, one of them asked about the need to slide. The league director said that they will use the IHSA rule (Fed) and runners have to slide. I informed him that he had the rule wrong. We can encourage our runners to slide when played upon but they don't have to as long as they slide legally or avoid malicious contact. Grudgingly, he accepted the ruling after confirming it in my rule book. He had been under that impression for years.

Another coach asked about the very play we are describing. The catcher is waiting for an imminent throw and is standing in front of the target base. 2-22-3 seems to fit the bill here. Imminent throws don't seem relevant to Fed rules. For high school, the fielder must have the ball before blocking a base, right?