Follow The Leader ...
 

Snaqwells gives excellent advice here. Write it down. Study it. Memorize it. Share it with your colleagues. Make it part of your pregame.

Me : Coach that was your warning "


Me thinking to myself : Do it again and you're on your way to the parking lot.

+1

Well, get ready to attack me, I guess...

I know how you all hate us coaches sometimes, and we often deserve it. I'm not condoning the coach's reaction in this situation, but please try to understand where it came from and to own some of your own mismanagement that contributed to the situation you describe. By your own description, you're picking and choosing to set aside certain rules and calls for whatever reasons you have. Then, from this coach's perspective, you choose to enforce another rule that hurts his team. That is tremendously frustrating. As a coach who regularly works with very underpowered teams, I am painfully aware how a choice not to call handchecks ("because it's a JV game") gives a distinct advantage to the team that was more powerful in the first place.

If it's a handcheck - on my kid or on theirs - please call it. I often feel that my choice to teach legal "keep-your-hands-off-and-move-your-feet" defense puts my kids at a disadvantage in games where officials decide that a hand (or armbar) on the hip is going to be OK that day.

Not to mention, I've had at least one situation where this was happening, and I earned a tech for chirping about it. Nevertheless, after the tech, the officials started getting the opponents' hands off. I hate having to "take one" just to get the game called by the rules, but I have to admit, getting that tech improved the game for my players.

Believe me when I say if I had called every single handcheck in that game, pretty much every girl would have fouled out. Would that have been good "management"? Then the coach would have been upset with me for "not letting them play."

Can't win for losing with you guys...

All contact is not a foul coach... per the rule book. If no advantage is gained (does not affect rhythm, speed, quickness or balance) then a foul does not exist.

I will give you an example... Your girl is driving to the basket and the defender has her hand on your players hip. However, it does not affect your player and she is beating her to the hoop for a layup. By your response above, we should call a foul and give you the ball out of bounds or let your player shoot free throws (and she may be no good at those!) rather than let her continue the drive and score the easy lay-up. That sounds like great defense by the refs imo.

My point is there is no absolute when it comes to this kind of foul (unless its NCAA men where John Adams has stated that a two hand hand check is an absolute). So when you are chirping that they have there hands on them, you may be right but it is not necessarily a foul. ;)

...or they would have laid off the handchecks and played better "real" defense. Coaches and players adapt to the officiating either way. If you give players the opportunity to gain an illegal advantage and not got called, most of them (in particular the better ones) will take the advantage you give them.

That may be.... You definitely can't when you start deciding which rules to enforce. I will say in my case, that I don't recall ever asking an official to "let them play" and overlook illegal contact. That's just in my case; I've heard others do it. Now I have heard coaches say, "if he (she) keeps that hand on your hip, run him (her) over to make sure they make a call - one way or the other." That's the risk you run managing it by letting it go.

Unfortunately, SO much of it is allowed in some games that we have to specifically run "bad defense" drills to teach ballhandlers to maintain composure with significant illegal contact. We tell the players on defense that this is specifically NOT how to play defense in the game, but to handcheck and armbar the ballhandler the length of the floor.

I agree. And the OP himself didn't call this incidental contact with the hands. He called it a "handcheck" - which is a foul per the rule book. The OP never suggested that these weren't called because they were incidental, he said they weren't called because "it was a JV game" and "every player would have fouled out."

From one of the NFHS presentations on POEs:

And from the 08-09 POEs:

So you're right - per the rule book, it does not constitute "an advantage" but rather "a tremendous advantage."

PS - I'm sorry to get snippy, but contrary to what you might read on this board, some of us work just as hard as officials to understand the rules. I have my rulebook in my game binder right behind "How to Win Friends and Influence People."

Sorry coach....Hand checking does not always create a "tremendous advantage" and in many cases it creates no advantage... If it doesn't create an advantage it wont be called by me or my crew. Sorry coach, but I am not out there to blow my whistle when it isn't needed (the athletes don't want that, the fans don't want that, officiating supervisors don't want it and almost every coach out there doesn't want it). The last thing I want to do it take away two points with a whistle and comeout with a "tweet-- hand check-- no basket" and if you are honest with yourself... you don't want it either.

Its knowing when an advantage is created is what seperates the good officials from the average to poor ones.

Get snippy all you want, it doesn't change anything.

The NFHS disagrees with you. You're the one who said "per the rule book" then made up your own verbiage. I quoted the NFHS. If my player is going to the hoop with a hand on his or her hip, you're supposed to call it. The more you don't, the worse the game gets.

Wrong. The game goes on as normal, we have flow and the kids get to play. I have never (in many many years calling at just about every level) had a game go bad when I didn't call contact that did not create an advantage. Advantage/ Disadvantage is covered in the rulebook... If you want rulebook robby to call your games (and not apply judgement), have points taken off for such trivial contact and have your players foul out for the same more power to you... I can assure you that you are in the minority.

I am done with this. Since you are a coach and must always have the last word here is your chance... somehthing tells me you dont get it anyway.

JoeT,

You have presented your case and provided references to support your position. There are time where some want to present their subjective perspective to suit their point of view.

Refereeing advantage/dis-advantage sometimes allows players to play through some of this contact. If the NFHS book was used in its literal form without exception many games would turn into free-throw shooting contests. This is exception not the rule. Without knowing the level of skill of your team and the competition first hand I can't say for sure. But on a particular night its something to consider.

Advantage/Disadvantage; I have heard this so much lately that it hardly makes sense to me anymore. I think we have taken it too far and use it too frequently to avoid making calls that should be made. Or we use it as a bailout when we fail to make a call that we feel we should have made.

Most of the time when I hear it used, it is interpreted only as creating a disadvantage for the offensive player. It is rarely referenced when a defensive player gains an advantage. As in a hand being used on an opponent acting as an aid in starting or stopping. It doesn't disadvantage the offense by limiting their movement, but is does advantage the defense by aiding their movement.

I'm not taking sides concerning the posters involved in this discussion but I think we as officials need to seriously think how we interpret Advantage/Disadvantage and "see the entire play." I think, as a group, we frequently incorrectly overuse each concept.

Forgive me, but I'm going to pick on your wording just a bit here. A literal use of the rule book requires us to determine if an advantage has been gained by the contact. Look at the definitions of "foul" and "incidental contact" in the rule book, and this becomes clear.

The dilemma is that different officials have different ways of determining an advantage. While the NFHS may want us to use a lower threshold for hand checks than for rebounds, there still needs to be some determined advantage (impeding, holding, pushing, etc.) in order for there to be a foul.

I picked on this wording because of the common phrase, "a foul is a foul." While it's a truism, it's a misleading one that assumes "contact" = "foul," and that officials have to figure out which fouls to call. That's not the case; we have to determine which contact is a foul, and call all the fouls.