Okay, I Just Plain Blew It!

[Camron Rust]

Originally posted by rainmaker
Girls' Varsity (man, it feels good to type that in!). I'm trail. Score close. A1 in front of me passes toward the other side of the floor. B1 jumps up and deflects, ball heads toward backcourt and far side from me. B2 runs to retrieve, dives over the oob line, flings ball. I called oob, gave the ball back to A. Coach B is jawing away, but I couldn't understand what he was talking about. Later, I asked my partner. He said B2 was still in the air when she threw the ball and furthermore, I should have let him make the call, since it was his sideline. He said it very nicely, and not the least critical, although perhaps he should have been.

Here are the questions: 1. I thought trail had the whole back court. Obviously, this didn't work very well in this case. Should I have not called this? I mean, I could have at least checked with my partner, but SHOULD I have?

Trail has the primary play (usually the ball) in the backcourt but the sideline and secondary play remains the lead's. As you found out, line calls are very difficult when being viewed from across the court.

A related example demonstrating lead/trail backcourt coverage that goes against "lead has the entire backcourt"...
A1, A2, B1 and B2 are around the FT line extended on the trail's side in the backcourt. B3 and A3 are on the opposite side halfway between the FT line extended and the division line. A1 passes the ball to A3 who is contacted as the ball is arriving. That is initially the lead's call even though it is in the backcourt since the lead was already covering those players and saw the whole play. The trail will likely not know the whole situation. If there had been no initial call, the trail would shift to those players and the lead would, after the trail has it covered, shift furher upcourt.

Likewise, the sideline is the lead's. The trail should only make that call if the lead doesn't AND it is absolutely obvious that it is OOB.

I've made that mistake before only to have the lead inform me that they were still inbounds by a few inches. I've also seen it made where I was the lead and the partner called it. In one case, the player was inbounds by about 2 feet and my partner called it from about 30 feet across the court.

I think where this gets confused is that often the trial will know who a ball was off of when it has clearly been knocked OOB (while the lead does not) and several official have the trail take that call (in spite of it being lead's line). Me, my line, my whistle (unless it is in the bleachers and I'm asleep)...but I'm not afraid to then defer to the trail to make the call.

Originally posted by rainmaker

2. Could partner have run in and given me the chance to correct? What would the correction be? an inadvertant whistle? I guess not...

They could but I'm not sure they would or that it would be best. It's not exactly like deciding who hit it last before it went out.

[Edited by Camron Rust on Dec 12th, 2003 at 01:55 PM]