NCAA injury procedure

[FMadera]

Originally Posted by Scrapper1

I was R1 last night and we had two injury situations.

1) Libero severely rolled her ankle. She was able to hop off the court to the bench, where it was obvious that she in extreme pain.

2) Starting setter was bleeding from her hand.

My understanding is that once the player is removed from the court, the coach has 30 seconds to decide between a sub or a time-out. Am I wrong on that? In neither case did my R2 (who I think is a very good official) start a 30-second clock or as the coach about a sub or TO.

So in both cases, we had significant delays in the match. The setter took about a minute and a half getting bandaged up, and only THEN did my partner look for blood on the court and on the ball.

The libero situation was resolved correctly (the player who was replaced by the libero returned to the court and then we allowed a sub only for that player). But that took even longer as the coach was obviously concerned about the setter.

In our post-match discussion, I said "Ok, I'm pretty weak on these rules, so walk me through the injury situations". My partner essentially said he's going to give them whatever time they need. He's not ever going to be "that guy" who starts the 30 second timer.

So . . . what do I do with this? Am I "that guy" if I do it by the book? Is it the general practice to give the team whatever time it wants to deal with its player? If it is, I'm ok with that. I just want to know what I'm supposed to do.

And if we should be starting the 30 seconds, and my R2 doesn't do it, what do I do as the R1 to get things moving?

As always, your mileage may vary. A couple of things to keep in mind.

1) Sometimes you know the player isn't coming back. So that makes things a little easier, in terms of when/how to approach the coach.
2) Does the team have a trainer? How long does it take the trainer to get there? If it's a simple assessment by the coach, I'll start the clock when they start assessing, and give them "30ish" seconds. If we're at 30 and they look like they're almost done, I'll see where we're at. If unclear, I'll ask the coach. If the other coach says something, I will say "I would do the same for your team."
3) The clock doesn't have to start right away. You might need time to determine if that's something that we might need to get someone involved (or something that might require the clock to start), vs. a player just needing a few seconds to walk it off.

Don't be in a huge rush to start the clock, but don't be "that guy" to demand an answer right at 30 seconds either. Be reasonable and fair, but don't cause a protest either.