Honestly, in the grand scheme of things, this may affect one of us, once in our career, in how we approach a situation.

No, that was a funny. Go buy a sense of humor.

Ding ding ding.

Fair enough... if those are your marching orders, it is what it is.

I do with without a directive and would not need one. But it is good they use one and are very clear. I think it is our obligation to find out when illegal items are being used, when they are visible to us. And the penalty is they cannot play until corrected, not like we are giving a T. I do not see the big deal and this is so rare because usually a coach takes care of this long before we have to address this issue. We often have to deal with it because a coach does not understand his or her responsibility and makes us the bad guy. And I just do not want to be the one that never asked when someone gets hurt and there is a clearly stated rule.

Peace

Confused. Does this happen rarely or often? :)

JRut, I feel the same. I'd do it even if the state didn't tell me. My mentors taught me to do it and they told me why: liability. Some here say "it's not my responsibility" or "we asked the coach if everyone is properly equipped" but if it came down to it, a good attorney could blow that out of the water.

If 90-95% of kids wore tape/band-aids on their earlobes then it wouldn't raise an eyebrow but that's not the case. Tape on earlobes isn't the norm. When something isn't the norm on the court don't we usually ask a few more questions?

I never said I wouldn't ask further, I'd go to the coach at that point to clarify. But I'm still not opening up a bandage.

If I see a player with tape on his ears, I would not ask him/her what is under the tape. I know what is under the tape. I just tell the potential player that if he or she wants to play in the game he or she will need to remove their earrings. Their choice. I do not care if they leave the earrings in or take them out and that's what I tell them if questioned. The decision is theirs.

This thread does make it abundantly clear who 'they' is.

As a comment on this... My daughter thought she would be okay to get her ears pierced during volleyball season because she thought the rule was different. Unfortunately for her, she got the same treatment and removed her earrings before a match in order to be allowed to play. For her the holes did close up in that short amount of time. She then waited until after basketball season was over and got them pierced again.

(Disclaimer: I have not read a lot of this thread, so my apologies if I am repeating someone.)

I find the whole jewelry thing rather ridiculous myself. Do the players not realize or just not care that the rule really is for their own protection?!

I was told a story the other day from someone who was actually present when an injury happened because of jewelry, and it was quite gruesome - not something I would ever care to experience or even witness.

I think it depends on where you live, seriously just like anything else.

Peace

How do you figure this?

"They" are those of you who would choose to simply ignore the tape over the ears. And claiming ignorance because you asked doesn't really let you off the hook. You know with 99.9% certainty that tape or bandaids over the ears means there are earrings underneath. Choosing to let it go makes you "they".

Wow.

Honestly, I kind of suspect that if you were on the court, and saw Andy or I or others who seem to agree, you'd sigh to yourselves, saying, "Great, I get to work with "that guy" again," and grit your teeth, and decide to just deal with it.

And Andy or I, seeing you or Hopguy, or some of the others, would say the same thing to ourselves.

And then when it the ball is finally in the air - we'd get along just fine and have a good game.

And if you were up here in my Association, and you allowed the kid to play with tape over their ears, I would move on to my next Varsity game while you went on to your next MS game.

I wouldn't allow a kid to play in my game with tape over the ears.