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| Bad Call Mars 3A Volleyball |
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| Sports | |||
| Written by David Wolman | |||
| Wednesday, 04 November 2009 08:00 | |||
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Referees have made their share of bad calls, but in my three-plus years covering sports, I’ve never seen an incident handled so poorly — at least on the high school level — than one at last weekend’s Class 3A state volleyball tournament in Salina. The series of events was stunning.  After winning all three pool-play matches Friday, Central Heights earned one of two top seeds in Saturday’s semifinals. Come Saturday, Central Heights was thinking about a state championship. Racing out to an 11-6 start over Phillipsburg in the first set, the Vikings were on a roll. What could possibly derail that momentum? When Cecilia Wuertz spotted an ace for an 11-6 lead, Southwestern Heights called a time out. During that break, officials huddled around the scorers’ table. A lengthy delay ensued. Even the tournament director came over. Eventually, it was ruled that the Vikings were out of rotation on the 13th point of the contest, which earlier had given them a 7-6 lead on a Kaitlin Horstick kill. Five points were taken away from the Vikings as a result, making the score 6-6. Even more stunning, Phillipsburg was given one point for the violation, making it 7-6 Panthers. Usually, when a team is out of rotation, the official scorekeeper is supposed to inform the coaches the moment a server attempts to serve a point. So, in this instance, the scorekeeper should’ve informed Central Heights coach Kelli Brown when the score was knotted at 6-all. Brown said she asked an official at that time, when the score was 6-all, if her team was in the proper rotation. She said the official told her it was. Turns out, as discussed during the later time out, the Vikings weren’t. Five points went by without the scorekeepers saying anything. Five points. Five points the Vikings worked hard to win. Now, the scorekeeper is saying that all of those points should be taken away because of a mistake on their end? I understand rules are rules, but if anything, the Vikings should have only one point taken away, and Phillipsburg should have been given one point for a 10-7 Viking lead. Yes, I concur that, even following the ruling, the victor in each set is the first to score 25 points, and there was still an entire second set — possibly a third set — to play. If there wasn’t the scoring change, who knows how it would affect the outcome, and which team would play for a state championship. The point is clear, though: Teams shouldn’t have pay for an official’s mistake.
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