Defense encroachment called too late.

[bisonlj]

This happened in my son's game last year when his team was on defense. The official who threw the flag was not a licensed official. Just some guy who watches football on TV and bought a shirt. The other two officials were experienced and discussed it. Since it was a 3rd grade game and the encroachment had no impact on the play, they chose to let it stand. They knew the correct call would have been to kill the play before it happened but in this case I understood what they were doing even if it was technically wrong. The one thing they did wrong was signal the penalty was declined. They probably should have waved off the flag. For any HS game (varsity or sub-varsity), I would definitely bring this back.