USA Ultimate

What's the Call? (Incidental Contact)

 

BY: Peri Kurshan, chair of UPA Standing Rules Committee.

As players of a self-officiated sport, it is our responsibility to know the rules.  This column features answers to your rules questions and will hopefully clarify some common misconceptions about the rules.   To submit rules questions, please email them to src_chair@usaultimate.org.

Q: A receiver takes off downfield with their defender in hot pursuit. The thrower puts up the huck, but as the disc goes up, the receiver and defender’s feet get tangled up and both players fall down as the disc sails by them landing in the endzone (easily catchable if they hadn’t fallen down). Is this a foul or is it just incidental contact? If so, on whom? Where should the disc go and the players be repositioned?

A: According to the rules, the word "incidental" actually means that the contact didn't affect continued play (II.H). In this case, since the contact clearly affected continued play (since the receiver and defender are on the ground instead of running to catch the disc), it's definitely a foul. So the real question is, a foul on whom? The answer is that it's a foul on whoever initiated the contact (II.E). In practice, this is often hard to determine, but usually means that it’s a foul on the trailing person, since the motion of the person in front is directed away from the other player, and therefore that player is less likely to have been the initiator of the contact. If it's really impossible to say who initiated the contact though, then it should be treated as a case of offsetting fouls, and the disc should go back to the thrower.

If the foul was determined to be caused by the defender (and still assuming that the offensive player had a realistic bid on the disc), then the offensive player should get the disc at the spot of the foul, NOT where the disc landed (XVI.H.3.b.2; assuming the foul is uncontested). 

In the case where the disc was not catchable, the contact may still be a foul, since the contact affected the players’ ability to continue playing (since they're on the ground now rather than running around), and play should stop and be restarted with a check. However, the turnover should stand, and the disc should not be awarded to the receiver, since the foul did not affect THE play (XVI.C.3) - meaning their ability to catch the disc - because it was uncatchable anyway.

Q: I’ve played in some very windy games where the points were long and the cap horn went off before halftime occurred, capping the game at a much lower final score. If in this situation the final score according to the cap makes it so that we have already “reached or exceeded half of the game total”, which is the definition of a halftime, should one then mirror sides/possession on the next point, as if it were right after halftime?

A: It is correct that "Halftime begins when one team’s score first reaches or exceeds half of the game total,” (V.B). However, the game total is what the game is supposed to be played to (i.e.- usually 15 or 13), and does not change when a cap goes on. The language in the cap section does not say that the game total changes when the cap goes on, but rather that a cap is a "score limit", and that the method of declaring a winner changes (from being the first team to reach the game total, to being the first team to reach the cap): "Caps are maximum score limits imposed before or during a game to limit the time required to declare a winner. The game ends when one team’s score first reaches the cap,” (V.A.1). So in a game that is originally supposed to be played to 15 (for example), halftime is always at 8, and no mirroring should occur before then, regardless of when the cap goes on.

This column appeared in the Fall 2009 issue of USA Ultimate.