Re: New FAQ: In or Out? Ball Compression and the Sideline

[Todd <tdh@vbref.org>]

John Hunley <john@jrh.com> writes:
> Not to beat a dead horse, but we've already established in the Lines
> thread that this can only work when line judges are working as they do at
> the international level:  four line judges 2-4m off the court, squatting
> down to look at the lines from essentially floor level.
> 
> In any other case, it is frequently necessary to make assumptions and call
> something more than what you actually saw.  If you don't, then you'll have
> to call every ball "out" that hits anywhere near the line judge, because
> it's impossible to see the contact when the ball is blocking your view.
> 
> Bottom line, the answer *has* to be more than just "call only what you
> see."

Agreed.

The reason that this is dragging on is that we've got two issues here.

The first is "what's the rule interpretation and how would we call a
play if we had super-slow-motion replay of all angles of a ball
contacting a line.  Bottom line, if any part of the ball actually
contacted the line, it's in.  This interpretation is a cut and dry
issue, and is addressed in the FAQ addition.

The second issue is how should a line judge apply this rule in
practice when he doesn't have the benefit of split-second stop-motion
vision, and doesn't always have a direct line of sight to the area of
the floor where the leather of the ball is contacting.  


--
                  Todd H.   tdh@vbref.org
USAV Regional Referee, Great Lakes Region, Palatine, IL
Todd's Volleyball Referee Page http://www.io.com/~tdh/vball/
"So you're a Ref and an engineer? Oh that explains it...."