First Contact

[chartrusepengui]

Ball is spiked from center front. First contact is overhead finger action where attacked ball pops off (not rolls off - no finger flex) fingertips. There is no prolonged contact but the ball goes back and has slight spin. No whistle. Holy Cow - thought I would be crucified!!

Following match gathering coat we were approached by a vet official who has been selected to officiate several state finals matches congratulated us on the no call. He said the same thing we've read several times with his own interpretation. "If ugly was illegal there would be a lot of coaches sitting in jail"

How do you call this?

[Andy]

Hard to say what I would call or no call without being there to see the play.

You indicated that you saw no prolonged contact, so you made no call...sounds good to me.

One thing that I have discovered is that things look a lot uglier and potentially illegal from the angle the coaches have on the bench as opposed to our angle and look from up on the stand.

The important thing is to rule based on the contact itself, not the spin of the ball, not the ugliness factor, or any other of a multitude of factors.

[OmniSpiker]

Watching ball contact from a reffing perspective is totally different from a coaching perspective. As a ref, do not overly concern yourself with the method of contact - body orientation or hand position. A ref only needs to look at the quality of contact - how long to determine a lift infraction or applicable double contact fault. A ball can contact any body part (except NFHS) and rebound in any direction.

A coach looks at the technique to go back to further train their players how to refine the method to avoid errors and increase ball handling control.