14.B.9.4 Face-off: Height where the ball is dropped should be clarified
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Started
The current rules in 14.B.9.4 Face-off read:
"The ball should be dropped from below hip height of players in the vicinity"
This is very vague. Shall the referee drop it right at hip height, or at knee height or right above the players sticks?
I suggest the rule to change in that way, that the referee drops the ball at 20 inches, so the top part of the wheel of the players. That is easy to do for the referee, is a clear height and is rather low which stops the ball from bouncing much. To keep things clear and also account for the different wheel sizes we could word it in a way, where it's just dropped from the height of the highest participating unicycle? I would say highest, because when theres one 16" unicycle involved in a kid's game, that might be too low.
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I like the idea of defining the high and would set it to the 20" despite which unicycles are involved. This makes it clearly and easy to measure for everybody.
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In the Swiss League, we have the guideline to drop the ball from knee height. This is basically the height of a 20inch unicycle. So I'm very much in favor of this change.
I'm not sure whether I would write it in the rules as the height of a 20inch unicycle or rather 50cm (so absolute height).
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I agree with Nicolai, I think this is the perfekt high to drop the ball.
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So far the only reason to reduce the max. height from where to drop is "stops the ball from bouncing much". In 2018 there was a long discussion on this matter: https://iuf-rulebook-2018.committees.unicycling-software.com/discussions/34. We found "For compromise: Taken text from "High stick" > "must always be below the players’ own hips": This as a maximum height would be easy to referee (nonsense heights would not be allowed) and would allows the referee if needed to drop the ball from lower height." I just check again, if I stand straight I would drop the from app. 90cm or around my hip height, If I curve my boddy (what I normally for Face-off) I would drop from between 60 and 50 cm or around knee height. I belive all members in this su are experienced referees and we wil drop from knee height.
But we should give more freedom for not so experienced referees (possibly fearful of their fingers or they think they need more time to go away) and dropping from below hip height is enough max. limitation for this referees. Therefore I suggest to keep "below hip height" and experienced referees use the unchanged freedom to drop from perfekt knee height.
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I agree with the 50cm absolute high. Maybe we could add something like "(approx. size of a 20" unicycle)" as kind of mnemonic in case someone doesn't have a feeling how much 50cm are.
If an unexpirenced referee is feared and does it from a bit higher nobody will complain.
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in my opinion the 50cm would be a good Idea. So suggestion for rule change would be the following:
The ball schould be dropped from a hight of 50cm (approx. 20inch).
With this change, i think its clear for all referees (expert and new)
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I agree with 50 cm. It sounds like everyone in this group already uses it.
I think we wont have any issue with new referees not feeling safe doing it as those referees are not going to be refereeing a high skill match and either wont need to abide by the rule, or the players who will be taking the faceoff wont be good enough to be quickly attacking the ball.