Illegal kicking on punt by R - penalty
 

Gentlemen:

Basketball official here who works the clock at the local HS.

Situation: 4th down and 11? from around the 45 - Team A in punt formation. Bad snap goes behind punter. Team A punter and member of Team B race towards ball. B kicks the ball out, kinda like a pass in soccer (the ball is around the 25 now) and it somehow bounces right up to him and he runs it into the endzone.

My partner and I both were like "well you can't do that" but we didn't know what the enforcement would be.

Here is what the officials did:

Since we don't mike lower level games we didn't know exactly what was going on, but the result seemed to indicate it was 15 yards from original LOS and a first down for team A. I don't know if was automatic or the result of the penalty.

Am I right to assume they got it correct?

This is a lose ball play, so the basic spot is the previous spot. Fouls by the offense behind the basic spot are penalized from the spot of the foul, all others from the basic spot. Therefore the penalty will be enforced from the previous spot as it is a foul by the defense. It ends up being 15 yards from the previous spot, repeat the down, first down if the line to gain is reached.

The only fouls which carry automatic first downs are roughing the kicker, holder, snapper, or passer and pass interference by the defense.

Thanks LDUB.

As it was, a friend of mine was on the crew whom I've worked basketball games with. I know him to be spot on with the rules on the court and I figured he would be on the field as well. I didn't ever doubt they got it right, it was more of a situation where I'd never really seen it before and didn't know what was going on (an automatic 1st or not).

So for that thanks for the clarification and well done to my friend.

For Federation it is really simple, only the roughing fouls and DPI = automatic first down.

Heh...except in Canadian football.

Well this game was played in Missouri, a state in the United States of America, under NFHS rules, so the quote still applies. ;)

Is this called illegal batting or illegal kick or both?

You can answer this yourself, once you know that batting by definition is done with the hand, and kicking by definition is done with the lower extremity below the knee.