USFA question to Western Rep

[sprivitor]

Hi Folks,

I've emailed this question to the USFA representative for our region. We use the DEFO position and can't get a good grip on it because there is no "DH or DP". Below is the question, what would your thought be on it?
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We were in a situation today where we had a DEFO and have become confused on the rule, we just don't know the exact situations where we can use it.

For instance, we had a player injure her foot at 3rd while on defense. We wanted to take her off the field for that inning and let the player who is on the bench come in and play on defense while she went out. The player on the bench was in the batting lineup. The DEFO was on the field. Because we had 10 players (includes 1 defo player), it caused a big delay with everyone trying to figure out what to do. In the end, we had to remove the player from the game and burn our DEFO player as a sub.

I guess the crux of my question is "is it possible to have 10 players which includes 1 DEFO player where we can rest players on defense interchangebly without having to lose the player's DEFO status or without having to use substitutions. On hot summer days, we like to rest our players during the game without using subs."

Any help our clarificiation is much appreciated.

Again Thanks!

Steve