Defered Option

[Reffing Rev.]

Anytime the word kick comes out of a captains mouth I immediately follow with two lines:

First: (If its the first half) "You mean you want to receive the second half, so you want to defer the first half right?"

Secondly: "You know if you choose to kick this half then they can choose to receive in the second half and you'll be kicking off both times."

Before I learned that trick, I had a couple of upset coaches both of which were more upset at their sons for not being the smartest captains on the field.

Since I got to varsity level I've never really had a problem. Only once did a captain say kick, but his coach told us in our pregame he was going to kick-off if he won. (They were awful on kick returns. I think they would have been better off after giving up a touchdown taking the option to kickoff again. Their defense gave them better field position than their kick return team did. )