What Would You Do - Situation #19

From SRI Debi Hanson

What Would You Do? (2009)
Situation #19

Situation 19 – Team C #8 serves the ball to Team A and loses rally. #4 on Team A serves a ball that lands on the sideline about 10 feet from the end line. The line judge immediately calls it in (it was their sideline to watch) while the line judge on the opposite side line calls it out (not their sideline to watch). The R1 looked at both officials and went with the out call. Team C while regrouping knew the ball was on the line, did not see the official make the out of bounds call. The ball chaser rolled the ball back to #8 on Team C. #8 picks up the ball rolled to her while she is standing in the center of the court and the R1 blows the whistle for serve. #8 looks at the official in confusion when someone on the bench yells at her to run back and serve. She serves an ace. The girls are still confused but realize they should have rotated and a sub takes place. Now #9 who just subbed in goes back to serve. At point of contact of the serve the R1 blows their whistle for illegal server. The Team C captain questions the official. What do the officials do at this point? What should have been the proper procedure?

Thank you to all who gave your ideas and input. I got lots of great comments.

Let’s look at why your preventive officiating before a match starts is so important. As was pointed out to me by a number of people, were the line judges instructed properly about which lines to call at the pre-game? That may have helped in this situation since the one LJ was making a call not on their line.

Problem #1 – When the two line judges had conflicting calls the official should have called them both over to determine what each saw. The only time line judges would be calling different calls was if the ball appeared to be on LJ #1’s sideline but LJ#2 clearly saw it out beyond their end line. This does happen and often the official will also see what the LJ’s see that the ball landed outside of the court on one of the lines making it out of bounds. In this situation though the ball was 10 feet from the end line, there should have been some discussion between the LJ’s and R2 at the least.

One comment was what did the R2 see in this scenario? Well, if the R2 was watching for illegal alignment as they should have been it’s possible they may have missed the play at the line. (It was pretty fast.) I believe the R2 should have been involved in the above discussion if it had taken place.

A good rule of thumb, if a team is acting as if they know the ball was on the line and it’s against their team, even though the line judge calls it in their favor it should be a clue something else is going on.

Problem #2 – The official goes with the incorrect “out of bounds” call and no discussion takes place. Under no circumstances should the R1 at this point have whistled for serve with no one standing in the service area. I know there are times where teams huddle after each play and R1’s try and speed them along using their service whistle. This was not one of those situations.

Problem #3 – The R2 and the scorekeeper miss that the wrong girl is serving. Had this been caught in a timely manner (back to what was discussed in the pre-game between the R2 and the scorekeeper – we are instructed to tell the scorekeeper and timer to blow the horn when the wrong girl serves) it would have at least been a place to fix what was going on before it got any farther.

Problem #4 – The R1 obviously figured out that two different girls had served back to back since they called illegal alignment on the serving team. The problem is if the R2 had looked at the book properly and their card properly they should have discovered that at this point the CORRECT girl is serving and it should have been a replay, with the penalty being overturned. Illegal alignment cannot be a correct call if the proper girl is serving which she now was.

Was it sloppiness, laziness, or just a momentary checking out by both officials? Who knows? Please take the time when a captain questions you about something to be sure along with your R2 you have the situation spelled out correctly. The correct response in this situation should have been a replay since the proper girl was serving. Once she served it voided out anything that came before it. This is a situation that would have taken some time to straighten out but it would have been the right thing to do.

I realize I had the luxury of seeing it all on video so it’s easy to say what should have been done. At least once in every official’s lifetime they will have a situation as strange as this. I encourage all of you to help prevent this from happening to you but doing a thorough pre-game, understanding and knowing how to deal with your line judges when conflicts arise, scanning the court to be sure everyone is with you and the call you just made along with being in the proper service area. Rushing the set along in these situations will come back to haunt you. A comment was made by someone after the game that it seemed like the officials were in a hurry to get the game over with.

Last, be professional when dealing with captains and coaches. There may be a point when you need to admit you are wrong or you blew the call. In the long run you will be more respected for “getting it right” than “being right” in your own eyes.

Hope you all had a great season!