Soccer is a Spring high school sport in Arkansas so I am just now getting around to reviewing the NFHS rule changes. With respect to offside, rule 11-1-4 now reads Are we now seekers again? Has this text been lurking there for years and I never noticed (I don't have access to my old NFHS rule books)?
Per Mark Koski the NFHS explicitly did not adopt the new offside thinking/interpretation/language whatever you want to call it from FIFA.
But here we're not talking about new interpretations, but rather a change that was made by FIFA close to 20 years ago (I'm sure someone here knows exactly when). That interpretation/clarification/change was that a player actually had to gain advantage, not just seek it. Have NFHS had the word "seek" in there all this time or did it just come back for 2015-16? I forwarded this question to our state rules interpreter this morning, and he said we are not going back in time and we are to call offside as we have been doing. To me this means the player has to gain advantage, not just seek it. But the new language is misleading.
I see your point but if I recall there is a test question on NFHS that seems to imply you are guilty of offside as soon as the ball is kicked regardless. (Though I don't call it that way) Wording goes something like a ball is played toward a player in an offside position. A defender reaches out and handles the ball before it gets the the offside player, what is the restart? Correct answer is IDK for offside. Utter nonsense.
Is this the 2015-16 book you're talking about? I don't have that yet. And the only one I have ready to hand at the moment is 2012-13, which didn't have an 11.1.4. Its 11.1.3 reads thusly:
I don't have the hard copy yet, but it is in the online version available through your NFHS Arbiter login under Publications.
One more reason that high school soccer is a joke. There are some good things for players but overall the lack of soccer minded people on the nfhs rules committees hurts the American soccer culture. Imho
I refuse to think of it that way. There are a few rule/law differences that alter the game slightly, but those are very minor compared with the opportunity for players and fans to see soccer at the scholastic level. @Law5 has given us some insights into why NFHS works the way it does, and it's true that non soccer people have some (too much?) influence over the sport. Still within their imperatives of participation and safety I think they are doing an OK job, and the seemingly arbitrary rule differences are gradually diminishing. In fits and starts, of course.
These rule differences matters because players often assume they use the same rules for their club games and high school when they do not. Because of the popularity of high school soccer many people will gain a massive misunderstanding about the sport especially over things like the offside rule. Offside is plenty complicated enough without nfhs trying to confuse it more.
When I was on the committee, it was split roughly 1/3 each referees, coaches and state administrators. Members are appointed by the state high school association whose turn has come up in each "section" of the country. I was a section representative, not the referee representative, and there were (and still are) referees on the committee. The reality is that the committee does not look at the entire rulebook. They only respond to proposed rule changes submitted from around the country. We had dozens of proposals every year from one referee who was also a technical writer. As you might guess, most of them involved inserting commas, relocating a chart, etc. Typically, aside from Daryl, there are about three to four dozen proposed changes. If you don't like the way the rules read, submit a proposal. The overall vision, however, is that this is a 'high school sport called soccer, one of several high school sports' and not 'soccer as played in high school.' Yes, high school soccer is different but FIFA (actually IFAB) Laws of the Game did not come to us carved on stone tablets, either. There are a lot of different ways rules could be written and none of them is the perfect, right, immortal answer.
The rules are slightly different. The players learn and adjust. Is pointy ball ruined because the goalposts and hash marks are wider in HS than the pros? Or you only need one foot in bounds on a pass reception instead of two? There are plenty of challenges for sports going forward (concussions anyone?), but rule differences at the HS level seem like pretty minor ones. Seeking to gain advantage!!!
To be fair no one believes the NFL has a consistent rule on what a catch is. http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2015/10...n-johnson-dez-bryant-panthers-eagles-ted-ginn
I think it's good to reflect on the ideological basis of the high school game- helps put a lot of the differences into a framework that makes sense. For example, seeing the game as an extension of the classroom helps you remember that foul language and taunting are disqualifications. A lot of HS rules I still struggle with, as they somewhat clumsily deal with issues that we already have tools for. A lot of these have to do with the countdown clock. For judgments on the actual play of the game, there is no ideological or didactic reason to call hs soccer any different that normal. (Thanks to law5) hs soccer looks and feels like real soccer more than ever. If we could only get away from the countdown clock and unlimited substitution, it actually might one day serve as a legitimate contribution to the maturation of soccer development in the U.S.
I still believe that 98% of HS players will play 3 or 4 years and never know there are differences between HS and club rules. One try on a throw-in and IFK on some injury stoppages are not significant differences. Neither is a countdown clock. Unlimited substitutions is NO different from almost all USSF. And, "seeking to gain an advantage", when non-trivial, is going to look alot like "challenging for the ball", IMO. IFAB's current contortions regarding mis-kicks, misplays, and attempted plays are way more damaging to the brains of soccer fans than the tiny soccer variations of NFHS soccer.
Most people don't realize that there are different laws/rule for different versions of soccer in the United States. When high school season ends here in New York and I can forget about NFHS rules for another 10 months, I will have to explain the minor differences when they come out. "Hey, referee, the ball didn't come in from the throw. Don't we get it?" "Nope, this is not high school." 99% of the time players accept that answer.
I wonder why that is? They are ready to accept different rule sets in other sports for different levels. Heck, baseball even has different rules for the two leagues in MLB, and no one but purists mind.
HS football players aren't playing college and pro at the same time. All they do is play HS. HS soccer players are playing under both the LOTG and NFHS rules (most states anyway) and then the next year playing NCAA rules in some cases. Differences that lead to confusion for them just result in more problems we as referees have to manage. Same goes for coaches that are too lazy to learn the differences and coach in two out of three, which many do.
No, no one but the purists even realize it. Spend some time on a football referee forum and you will quickly see that the HS referees frequently deal with coaches who get their rules knowledge from Sunday afternoon. It's really no different than what we deal with in soccer.
HS baseball players are playing real BB rules and HS rules (and sometimes a league that uses NCAA rules) -- and the BB rules are at least as different. HS basketball players are playing club leagues that may use different rules as well. While I like harmonization, let's not pretend it is unique or special in soccer. (Indeed, pointy ball is probably especially unique as, so far as I know, there really isn't any competitive football outside the scholastic system once kids reach HS.)
Soccer is pretty unique. High school baseball is mostly governed by NFHS rules, they might play NCAA in some states but that is in lieu of NFHS rules not in addition. Travel baseball might use OBR or Cal Ripken rules but there are very few players doing both travel and HS at the same time. Basketball is also a bad example -- every AAU game I've ever done uses NFHS rules with modified RoC.
I have to disagree. Baseball is by far the worst offender here. The differences in the soccer rules are minor and make no significant difference to the game. The baseball rules vary significantly and materially. Additionally, there are may U19 leagues that play in the summer and fall that are using OBR as their base. American Legion being one of the more prominent examples.
The AAU (and other leagues my son has played in) have an awful lot of ROC that likely make one of their games more different from a HS game than the differences between NFHS and LOTG. I'm utterly perplexed by your assertion that few baseball players are doing both travel and HS. At least here, the same rules prevent in season non-school play in soccer and baseball, and off season club or whatever is the absolute norm in baseball. (And those teams will often play in different leagues and tournaments that may play under any of the available rule sets, often with modifications on top.) I think the reality is that the differences bother soccer people more, not that there are more differences.