Held Ball Signal

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by bucky

I never really understood the stop clock signal ... The whistle is enough.

Granted, it does seem a little bit redundant. Back when I was coaching middle school basketball, we didn't have adults for timekeepers, and scorekeepers. We used students, and it was my job to teach them. The easiest thing to teach? "Stop the clock every time you hear a whistle". Nothing about open hand, closed fist, etc. just, "Stop the clock every time you hear a whistle". Of course, teaching when to start the clock was a little more complicated, but for stopping the clock, "Stop the clock every time you hear a whistle", worked well enough for middle school games.

Going back to the ancient days of NFHS (or whatever) mechanics, there must have been a pretty good reason for the three different stop the clock signals (fouls, violations, held (jump balls back then) balls). I wonder what that reason was? Maybe, the more information communicated to everybody the better? Or, maybe it was considered to be some type of preliminary signal, like we all do for fouls (of course for fouls it would be a preliminary signal to the second preliminary signal)?

[Camron Rust]

Originally Posted by bucky

I never really understood the stop clock signal (open hand in air). What is the purpose? And if the response if "to stop the clock" well then what is the purpose of the whistle? The whistle is enough.

Whistles occasionally failed to sound? (The motivation for the inventor of the Fox 40)

Originally Posted by BillyMac

Going back to the ancient days of NFHS (or whatever) mechanics, there must have been a pretty good reason for the three stop the clock signals (fouls, violations, held (jump balls back then) balls). I wonder what that reason was? Maybe, the more information communicated the better?

My guess is that the initial signal set didn't necessarily indicate the nature of the infraction with a 2nd signal but that the fist/open hand was the entire signal.

[Adam]

1. There are some games where a whistle can't be easily heard.
2. It also tells everyone which official made a call.
3. The hand/fist tells your partner(s) what your about to call. This comes in handy on a DW.

It really isn't more complicated than that, IMO.

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by Adam

1. There are some games where a whistle can't be easily heard.
2. It also tells everyone which official made a call.
3. The hand/fist tells your partner(s) what your about to call. This comes in handy on a DW.

Bingo.

Now we can finally put this to bed for good. "Say goodnight, Gracie".

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by Camron Rust

Whistles occasionally failed to sound?

Originally Posted by Adam

There are some games where a whistle can't be easily heard.

[so cal lurker]

Originally Posted by BillyMac

I not only owned that whistle once upon a time, but had the pea get stuck . . . beyond getting stuck, on some of those whistles it was sometimes possible to blow a deteriorated pea completely out of the hole . . .