LaxTV Forums | A Forum About The MCLA

I was doing a training class last night for a new HS official recruit , and we were discussing stick measurements when I came across another NCAA/NFHS difference that I was unaware of.
The NCAA book says;
The required guard stop at the throat of the crosse must be a minimum of 10 inches from the outside edge of the head to the farthest unexposed edge of the stop. The stop must be perpendicular to the handle of the crosse and wide enough to permit the ball to rest loosely on the stop. The fixed length of the goalkeeper’s crosse head may not exceed 16 1/2 inches from the outside edge of the head to the farthest exposed edge of the stop.

I was aware of this subtle difference between the goalie's stick and everyone else's. For non-goalies you're measuring from the top of the head to the plastic below the ball stop (unexposed edge), whereas on the goalie's stick it's to the front of the stop. Enough confusion there.
But as I was looking at the NFHS book, which is what the training was supposed to be for, it says;
The required guard stop at the throat of the crosse must be a minimum of 10 inches from the outside edge of the head to the farthest exposed edge of the stop. The fixed length of the goalkeeper's crosse head shall not exceed 16 inches from the top to the farthest exposed edge of
the stop.

Aarrghh! So in Fed rules, you have to have 10 inches to the TOP of the stop, in NCAA it's to the BOTTOM of the stop. They also grant the goalie an extra 1/2" of length in the NCAA.
The reason I bring this up is that most MDIA officials are also doing a lot of HS games, and they may have been trained that you need 10" to the top of the stop, which would be incorrect in NCAA. It may seem minor, but things like this can lead to blown calls that can end up penalizing a team for 3 min. NR! That's severe. This is just one of several dozen differences between the two rule books, which makes life so much fun for those that officiate at both levels.

Advantage gained? How often would you make that call in any college or NFHS game? What type of advantage are you trying to gain? Obviously, if the stick is 4" tall - they are gaining an advantage, but just a hair shy of 10" - I don't get it.

Sonny wrote:Advantage gained? How often would you make that call in any college or NFHS game? What type of advantage are you trying to gain? Obviously, if the stick is 4" tall - they are gaining an advantage, but just a hair shy of 10" - I don't get it.

You have to draw the line somewhere. You can't just leave it to the officials' judgment on how much smaller than the prescribed meeasurements is enough to confer an advantage. That's like saying, "well, I didn't call him out of bounds because he only stepped on the line a litte bit."

And if 1/4" doesn't make any difference, why don't you just make it 1/4" over the lower limit so you don't run into trouble?

Face it: it's perfectly fair to say "This is where we're drawing the line. If the head of your stick is less than 6.5", inside measurement, at the widest point, you get a 3:00 NR penalty, so make sure your stick is legal before you bring it into the game. And if you get a penalty because it's 1/8" too narrow, shut your pie hole and take your penalty like a man."

Little harsh, don't you think LaxRef? (Shut your pie hole? We don't need to be vindictive as we administer penalties)

Yes, we have to draw the line somewhere. (That's why we get paid the big bucks!) But we make judgments all the time - A push 80 yards away from the goal might get passed on because little advantage was gained - The same exact push 10 yards from the GLE will most likely would (and should) get called.

You can't call every exact rule in the book, as they are written. If you did, you would never get a game finished.

I'm still trying to determine what advantage the player in question is gaining with a stick 1/8" of inch too short, top to bottom (regardless of how you measure it). (Good pick up, by the way laxfan25 on yet another difference in the two rulebooks.)

On stick measurements I don't think you can go just by advantage gained. After all, I've never understood why you would want a stick narrower at the top of the head - what's the advantage there? That said, when I'm measuring stick width, if it's a 1/16 of an inch, I might let it go, but if it's over an 1/8" it will typically draw the flag.
My point on head length is that in "the old days" the foam stop was at least a 1/4 thick, so a head that measures 10" in the NCAA book may clock in at 9 3/4 in the Fed book. That much under the limit will usually draw a flag on any dimension (width, stick length), and I wouldn't want to go into a game depending on the leniency of a particular ref.
But my biggest issue is that there is such a big difference between the two books on that point, and it becomes a challenge to remember all this stuff! (Especially since some of the refs I work with feel its bad form to bring a rulebook to the field. (Which I've never understood.))

Sonny wrote:Little harsh, don't you think LaxRef? (Shut your pie hole? We don't need to be vindictive as we administer penalties)

I was speaking figuratively. I would of course never say that to a player on the field.

Sonny wrote:Yes, we have to draw the line somewhere. (That's why we get paid the big bucks!) But we make judgments all the time - A push 80 yards away from the goal might get passed on because little advantage was gained - The same exact push 10 yards from the GLE will most likely would (and should) get called.

You're talking about the principle of advantage/disadvantage, with which I'm well familiar (for those who aren't, see http://tinyurl.com/btlg9). However, that does not apply to line calls and other black and white issues like stick dimensions. Think about your argument about "What advantage does a player get by having a stick that's 1/8 of an inch too narrow?" You might as well ask "What advantage does a player gain by stepping 1/8 of an inch in the crease?" It doesn't matter, because it's black and white: either the stick is too narrow, or it's not, and either the player stepped in the crease or he didn't.

Sonny wrote:You can't call every exact rule in the book, as they are written. If you did, you would never get a game finished.

That's true, you can't call every rule exactly as in the book. But you'd better call the black-and-white ones that way.

Again, you're right, there probably isn't a huge advantage in having a stick that's 1/8" too narrow. But, on the other hand, that's where they drew the line, and there's absolutely no excuse for landing on the wrong side of that line. You can measure it yourself. You can even ask the officials to measure it before the game.

With something like stick checks, you need an objective standard. Which, incidentally, is what bugs me about the "ball rolling out" tests, since they don't go into enough detail in the rules about exactly what constitutes a "failure."