NFHS Points of Emphasis

[rockyroad]

Originally Posted by Jurassic Referee

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2) Geeze, I can't answer that one. It's certainly a good point. We go over new rules, POE's etc. with our officials at the start of each year, and we insist that they call their games by them. After that, we do have to police our officials to make sure that they are following our directives- with the object naturally being uniformity of game-calling. However, I'd have to be awfully naive (or stoopid) to believe that everybody is doing things our way. There's different ideas from area to area on how much physical contact should be allowed under the boards, for example. Expecting uniformity of calls across the country is just a pipe dream. Imo, the best that can be hoped for is uniformity of calls within a specific area. If a few officials are gonna ignore a new rule or POE, then it's probably better for everybody involved if all officials in that area do the same. That way, at least the players and coaches know what to expect, and what they can do or not do during a game.

And to add to JR's point here (and this is in NO way referring to JR) - as long as we have Supervisors, Commissioners, Assignors, whatever we want to call them, who decide that they want something called "this way" in their games, we will never have uniformity across the boards...example: one Supervisor I work for wants hand-checking called according to the way it is written in the book (rightly so), but another supervisor I work for only wants it called if the ball handler is "going north-south, but not if they're going east-west" (exact words from the supervisor since I wrote them down when they were said)...so when a team from the second conference plays at a school from the first conference, they get really frustrated at the hand-check calls, and vice-versa...it's very frustrating.