"It all began with an invention - the creation of a revolutionary pealess whistle by professional referee Ron Foxcroft in 1987." - http://www.fox40whistle.com/corporate/fox40story.shtml

Acme Thunder in plastic.

Like I said before, do what is accepted in your area since this isn't addressed in NFHS publications. However, to say that it may cause confusion is just false. It's done in NCAA and it's done around here for NFHS and I've never seen it cause confusion, not even once. The only confusion I've ever seen is when the whistle doesn't blow and the scorekeeper forgot to turn the "automatic horn" switch on.

Z

That's it! Great example Z, I think this may be just the right one to use to convince my assignor/trainers to reinstitute the blow at the end of periods. This happens more often than some people want to believe. I had forgotten about the auto thing and it happened twice to me last year.

If it does not go off, then you need to blow the whistle. Why would you need to when it does go off correctly?

The what if logic does not hold up. What if you don't have a clock with tenths and you don't have a horn?

I think there is justification to blow the whistle at the end of quarters. How many of us have ever heard a horn get incorrected sounded during a live ball? Players are often taught to ignore the horn and play to the whistle. If there's an active play, I think a whistle may be a good thing to make sure the players stop and also, if a shoting motion is in progress, to make it clear that you are waving off the shot.

Read my first reply in this thread.

You need to blow if you notice a timing error and you have a count or if a shot is late. A whistle any other time is redundant.

The point you didn't address is the fact that players are often taught to play to the whistle...not the horn...since occassionaly inadvertant horns don't cause a dead ball but a whistle always coincides with a dead ball.

Players are taught many things that we don't need to address by blowing our whistles.;)

Put me down as in favor of redundancy on this topic then.

Me too, especially in my state where a shot clock is used for girl's games. If the players played the horn rather than the whistle, we'd have several stoppages per game due to the shot clock operator being way too slow on the resets. If a shot clock horn goes off, it's ignored unless a whistle follows shortly thereafter. Around here, it makes sense to treat the game horn the same way.

Z