10-1-2 cover it?
 

Heard this situation the other day through the usual ref grapevine. a Sophomore girls game. Team A thrashing team B 45-3 at half. Coach of team A wants to bring in his freshmen (all ten of them), who were just playing in gym next door to play in second half. Officials tell him no, and he's upset as well as Varsity coach who has been watching.

By rule, I believe, team could, and be assessed a T for entering additional numbers after 10 minute mark.

Game management wise I'm looking for opinions on this. I've heard various opinions so far. "it's not a circus, I wouldn't allow it" to "as long as losing coach agreed and a T was assessed I don't have a problem with it."

They were not in the book and the rules allow anyone to be added into the game with a penalty. Not sure why I would care as an official as long as I enforced the penalty.

Peace

Add the names, assess the T, play on. Not my job to determine who can play or not. Don't know why any official would care otherwise. If they feel compelled to, write a report to your assignor and/or state.

And since the IHSA got rid of rules as to how many quarters individual players can play, I really would not care.

Peace

As long as the players appeared to be eligible, there is no reason to oppose the coach adding them to the roster. It is up to the team to put eligible players on the court. If they don't that is largely their problem.

By "appeared to be eligible" I mean of an appropriate age/gender that they could possibly be on the team and I would only oppose any exception from a liability perspective. You wouldn't want a 9 year old playing with 14's and 15's no matter the situation. The physical differences would just be too great and the risk of someone getting hurt would not be acceptable.

Why in the world would someone disallow this?

Age Difference ...
 

Some Christian school conferences, with very small school enrollments, allow middle school age kids to play with the high school varsity team. We have such schools here in Connecticut.

I believe that there are a few states that have very small high schools in rural areas where middle school age kids are housed in the same building as high school age kids, and these middle school age kids are allowed to player in the high school varsity team. Our state interscholastic sports governing body does not allow this here in Connecticut.

Under such conference guidelines, it would be possible to have a twelve year old playing with a seventeen year old.

Where we are, that would not be our call. The opposing coach might contact the state association and complain and they can look at the book later.

I had one years ago where a kid reported and was marked in the book as in the game and the clock ran out before he could enter the game. We made sure that he was deleted from the book as having played so he would have more quarters available for the varsity game that followed.

In Michigan, a player can only play one game per day. So if 10 players played in the freshman game that just ended, they would not be permitted to play for the JV team the same day.

Maybe a fellow MHSAA official can help me here. I'd agree referees normally don't get involved in eligibility issues, but if a coach specifically asks an official if this scenario is permitted, do we have a duty to say "No, it's not"?

For states that would allow this, I'd have to agree it's a single Admin-T for adding names to the scorebook.

I wouldn't know or remember playing limits for players and I would tell a coach as much. It's not my concern

Is this something the officials have anything to do with or is this an administrative issue? We had a quarter rule in Illinois that has since gone away, but we did not have anything to do with this from the officiating side. It was self-policed amongst the schools.

And just curious, what about tournaments that might have a team playing multiple games in a day? Or is that totally disallowed in Michigan?

Peace

Agree with Rut and APG, this isn't something I'd ever get involved in. If a coach wants to play someone, I have to assume he knows who is eligible.

It sounds like if the official truly believes there is an issue, they can submit a report of concern.

And as for multiple games in a day, the coach's guidebook states this is totally disallowed:

There are many Christmas Basketball Tournaments here that have near the end a couple of games in the same day. So I guess many Michigan teams are not coming here to play in some big time tournaments. ;)

Peace