Pulling Player to the floor

[LepTalBldgs]

Girls freshman game last night where home team was clearly better than the visitor and had doubled the visitors score at halftime.

Mid-way through the third period the visitors get a defensive rebound and she holds it above her head. Smaller home team player reaches up and pulls hard on the ball, resulting in visiting player on her back on the ground and home player with the ball. I was trail on opposite side with all this taking place right about on the lane line, opposite side, about second block from the bottom.

It was clearly all ball, not a bit of skin attached. It was also clearly in my partners area. There's probably 6 or so players around this, so a few bodies but with the ball up high we had a clear view.

Within a few seconds home girl gets stipped (Beavis he said "home girl gets stripped") and visitors recover. Girl is still on the floor, maybe three seconds has elapsed. I blow my whistle and signal that I have a time out.

Girl is sobbing a bit and coach is a bit hostile but nothing severe at all. Player gets up a few seconds later and walks to the bench, we have a sub and move on.

Partner and I talked about it later and both agreed a very clean steal. We had generally been letting them play, even letting them wrestle a bit for held balls so we wouldn't have 15 held ball whistles.

We thought later that we could have blown the whistle immediately when she hit the floor and called a held ball, but the home and visiting girls only simultaneously held it for a second. It happened in a flash. "Without undue roughness comes to mind".

Given the score (home team up maybe 25-11) and player ability, what do you recommend?

[nine01c]

I have found that in girls games I must be quicker on the whistle in held ball situations. Like instatnly. Unless both teams have many skilled players (not likely, especially in subvarsity). Held balls are one of the main reasons I prefer boys games.

[LepTalBldgs]

My partner told me in pre-game that he has an extremely patient whistle in girls held balls. He found that they generally get it untied without being too physical, but that boys will just dive in or start throwing elbows/pushing. We had really been very slow blowing held balls (that phrase was bad). Where I usually have had 10 or so per game, I probably had 4 this game.

It seemed to work except in this instance.

[ChiliBob]

I had a similar situation in a BV game Tuesday. It happened pretty quick and nothing was called but A1 hit the floor. There was no reaction from either coach or fans even but it sure looked bad to me.

Thinking back, I am usually pretty quick with a held ball call in a situation like this and think I could have called it then, but didn't. Maybe 8-10 times I would just to keep control on the game. There was no foul in my case in anyway either or could I say unnecessary rough play just the force of one player pulling the ball away in an akward way that caused A1 to become off balance.

[Back In The Saddle]

Saw a similar play in a GV game a couple of weeks ago. In this case, the girl that got stripped actually went flying through the air and landed a few feet away. The officials had no call on this. But the same phrase came to my mind about undue roughness. I posted a thread here about it, but don't think I got any kind of definitive response.