In the NCAA and U.S. junior lacrosse, the penalty for illegal lacrosse is the same. The fact is that the officer holds the illegal stick and bends his opposite elbow on his chest, with his index finger stretched out to point towards the illegal stick. This signal is also used for any other illegal equipment penalty in a lacrosse game. So if you see old photos of lacrosse players with a U-shaped shooting rope setup in your pocket, that`s why. It was legal, but it became illegal with the adoption of the 4-inch rule. Therefore, the only legal line configurations currently are those composed of direct shooters. What happens if my flanks loosen as the game progresses? What if all these confrontations had pinched my head too much to be legal? What happens if I massage this bag too much for an extra millimeter of support? This is checked both at the front and back of the net during a batting check. In both cases, the ball must break the plane of the top rail of your head to be considered legal. Width. This is the measurement on the top of your stick (the shovel) at the widest point. This length must be at least 6 inches and can be a maximum of 10 inches. This brings us to one of the most common questions in women`s football: why do female strikers drop their bats immediately after a goal? Players who score goals must drop their stick immediately after a goal, as is now stated in the rules of the game, to ensure that their bag is not tampered with before a check of the stick.
So, without further ado, let`s keep ourselves out of the penalty zone and hold your (legal) stick in our hands. In the bag, a woman`s lacrosse head differs most markedly from the male game, as it is much flatter to compensate for the lack of physique in sports. Keep in mind that these rules for the women`s game change more at the youngest levels, and the rules discussed here are intended for competitions from the age of 12. Fortunately, over the years, lacrosse officials have become adept at these deceptive tactics, especially in the higher levels of lacrosse competition. As a result, pulling threads, more than anything else, are a figment of the imagination of the past. The next area officials are analyzing regarding the legality of lacrosse sticks is the bag. Since lacrosse players have a lot of freedom in building their individual bag, there are several different tests that officials must perform to say for sure that a bag is legal. You might run into problems if your lacrosse head has had its fair share of lacrosse seasons, especially in the summer. When a butt head suffers the abuse of several lacrosse seasons, the plastic of the head begins to deform.
In other words, the plastic of the head begins to change shape by bending or pinching without you intentionally doing so. With the way a pull rope is stretched, a player only has to pull the pull cord to instantly make their bag flatter than it actually is. The flat shape holds even when a ball falls into the pocket as the ropes snake through the net. Players pull the string after scoring a goal or at the end of a quarter when they know officials will perform a stick test. Length. The total length of a men`s lacrosse stick (handle + head) is between 40 and 42 inches for offensive and short midfielders and between 52 and 72 inches for long defensive bats and LSMs. For male goalkeepers, their sticks can range from 40 to 72 inches. Tabletop testing is a reliable method of measuring the shaft angle of a butt stick. The butt stick is placed on a table so that the head, as well as most of the rod, is completely positioned on the table. Only a small part of the rod near the end cap should hang from the top of the table. Players also need to be careful about how they stick their sticks. For a stick to remain legal, no tape should touch the bottom of the butt head (neck).
If you`re doing this to hold a head and butt shaft together, use a screw instead. The two most important things that determine whether your lacrosse stick is legal are the bag and the shape of the head, but there are many other things you also need to consider. However, if you play with a wooden butt head, a ball stop is necessary. Plastic butt heads can withstand much more abuse than wooden butt heads, which is why this rule came into effect. Wooden butt heads need the extra cushion of the ball stop to absorb the constant blows of the catch. Otherwise, the structural integrity of the wooden butt head will wear out much faster, making it much more likely that the head will break. If the head is excessively pinched, the head does not comply with legal measures and is considered illegal. So, if your head has gone through the ringer, I recommend taking a few steps yourself to make sure it`s still allowed.
In this now „universal“ standard, you can pinch your head and modify it further as long as it remains within that threshold. But again, you should always check your stick three times to make sure it remains legal throughout its use. The exact position of the firing ropes on a butt stick must also be placed in a specific sector of the butt head. In particular, the firing cords must be within 4 inches of the top of the shovel. Any line of fire that exceeds this 4-inch threshold makes the entire stick illegal. The attacking stick/midfielder has the least flexibility in terms of length, while the goalkeeper`s stick has the most flexibility in terms of length. While I have to admit, I`ve never seen a goalie play with a 72-inch stick in play. Failure to comply with the legal range of pole length is automatically considered illegal.
To avoid this, I organized a chart that lists the legal length of the three different types of lacrosse sticks, from the tip of the butt head to the end of the handle. When you get custom lacrosse heads to sell from our expert freelancers at Lacrosse Fanatic, you don`t have to worry about where your shooting points fall, as they make sure they follow the stick rules for you! There are other miscellaneous regulations that butt sticks must follow, including banning duct tape on the throat of the butt head, sawing the bottom of the neck to allow leverage, abandoning an end cap at the bottom of the tree, and waiving a ball stop for wooden butt heads (plastic shovels do not require ball stops). The last way to spot an illegal stick is to look at the ground. If a stick does not have a rubber piston end or tape covering the metal on the bottom shaft, it will draw a flag. Not covering the bottom of a stick with a stick or tape can hurt the people you play with. For every lacrosse player, it`s important to understand the rules of the stick, because if it`s illegal, not only will you not be able to use the stick until it`s repaired, but you`ll end up in the penalty box. The good news is that an illegal stick can be easily avoided as long as you know how to spot an illegal stick of lacrosse. Here`s a simple breakdown of what you should look for and possibly fix if you need to! This helps officials see if an opposing player is illegally placing his hands on the throat of the lacrosse head.
With tape matching the color of the head, it is more difficult to judge whether a face-off player cheats or not. The final grip of the ball has to do with how the ball can stay in the pocket when the stick is turned over at an angle perpendicular to the ground. Another part of the stick that a ref will check is the firing cords. Make sure you don`t have a stab more than four inches, starting from the top of the head. The ends of the firing cords are also measured; The flaring of the firing range from the knot shall not exceed two inches. It is illegal to tape any part of the throat of the butt head. Officers must have a clear, unobstructed view of the throat to ensure that ball carriers do not clench the stick at the base of the head. If you decide to line the wallpaper near the butt head, be sure to keep the material of the strip strictly on the upper.