Player with a saftey concern checks into the game
 

Before the game during warm ups a referee noticed a player from a team has long fingernails that he deemed a saftey concern. The referee tells the player and the coach that they can not play with their nails that long citing the rule 3-7.

What do you do if during the game the player that was deemed unsafe whom didnt correct the issue checks into the game, it wasn't noticed, and play became live.

Send them out of the game. But it has to be bad to even address honestly.

Peace

I agree totally.

I ask because our chapter was told tonight that you would give the coach a direct technical foul.

I've been researching this and cant find anything on paper to confirm or debunk the explanation.

What you were told is merely the opinion of someone who feels that the coach needs to be penalized for disobeying the pregame instruction of the referee. There are going to be several people who agree with that opinion.

On the other side is the opinion that preventing the player from participating is the penalty and that the officiating crew should have been more diligent in noticing the team member check-in as a substitute and simply prevented the entry if he/she is not in compliance. I’m in that category. I’m constantly shocked by the lack of attention that officials give to the substitution process. I always look for jewelry or illegal apparel when beckoning the substitutes, but am well-aware that the vast majority of HS officials do not. They just mindlessly wave them in.

One can prevent all of the scenarios involving “a kid was participating with such and such yet none of the officials noticed” by paying attention to times when players enter the game.

I agree that there should be no "penalty". The penalty is as Nevada says; the player can't play. There is nothing in either the rulebook or casebook that even suggests there should be a T for this situation.

I check substitutes to make sure that they are legal before beckoning them in. I have sent back a substitute because he was not wearing his uniform properly.

We all do that on some level, but it is not like we are looking at fingernails that closely. All that I would probably remember is that I said something to that player about their issue. But there is certainly no technical justification for this situation.

Peace

Personal Experience.
 

I am late joining the party.

It was the early 1990s (Mark, Jr., was a baby and Bonnie Jean was not yet pregnant with Andy. It was late in the season and I had a Saturday afternoon girls' VAR game (Which was unusual because I usually had a women's college game on Saturday afternoons followed by a boys' VAR game in the evening but on this particular Saturday afternoon I had a girls' H.S. game instead, in fact I ended up having two girls' VAR games that afternoon but that is a story for another time.).

I was the R and the U (The OhioHSAA had not yet gone to Three-Person Crews for boys' and girls' VAR games.) gathered at Center Court for the Pre-Game meeting. I immediately noticed that the Captain for the Home Team had finger nails that extended approximately 0.5 inch past the tip of her fingers and the portion of the each nail that extended past the finger tips were approximately 1/16 inch thick. The nails were painted a bright red with silver stars pasted on top of and in the middle of each nail. The nails were artificial nails that she had put on that morning because she was attending a formal dance the evening. I informed her that she could not play while wearing them because they were a safety hazard. Needless to say her HC and the Home School AD became involved in the discussion and neither the Player nor her HC nor the AD were happy with my decision.

She explained that it had cost her $5 per nail to have them done and that the only way to remove them was to cut them off. I told her, her HC, and her AD that I was not making her remove them, just that I would not let her play while she was wearing them. I guess she wanted to play in the worst way because she cut them off.

Sunday afternoon I received a phone call from the League Assigner demanding to know why I had made her cut her nails off. I told him that was 100% incorrect and that I had made no such demand. I told him that she just couldn't play while wearing them. Her AD and her parents were going to file a complaint with the OhioHSAA. I told them that so would I and I do not think they will like Columbus's response and they were not, :p.

MTD, Sr.

In high school soccer, the coach does get cautioned (yellow card--for non-soccer folks, it's similar to a T) if a player comes onto the field illegally equipped.

I am told that the rule was changed to the coach only gets cautioned for the first offense (and after that the player does) as some teams not happy with their coach would just happen to forget to take out those earrings, and when the second player did it, the coach was ejected . . .

Hit The Nail On The Head ...
 

I worked a varsity girls vocational technical high school game several years ago. I noted a home team player with extremely long nails warming up.

I explained to her that she could not play with such long nails. She told me that she couldn't trim her nails because her nails were part of her mid-year exam the next morning in her advanced cosmetology class.

She really wanted to play, so she trimmed them.

At halftime, her mother came out of the stands to question my ruling.

"No ma'am, I didn't tell your daughter to trim her nails, I told that she couldn't play with her nails that long."