100% Confidence is not 100% Correctness

We won our first game last night. It felt good to play up to our potential. Before the game I spent some time thinking about positions each player will be playing – who are the handles, who will be playing which position in a zone defence. It’s strange that when I’m not captain I have no problem bossing people around and calling the play before the pull but when everyone is staring at me I suddenly am not so sure. It’s great having some experience on the team to help out.

When I started playing seriously a couple years ago I remember calling fouls VERY rarely and when I did I seemed to always be talked out of it by a more experienced player. Since then, I’ve made an effort over the last 6 months to read through and understand the rules and have subscribed to the UPA rules discussion newsgroup as part of doing this. It seems like in a non-competitive league calling fouls is sometimes considered bad spirit, but I’d much rather use this time to learn how and when to call fouls. When it’s relevant, I tell my players to call fouls if they’re ever in doubt and I prefer when they hold their ground. If it’s really not a foul then the other team can just contest and discuss. I took my own advice yesterday, and after my teammate was fouled (uncontested) while attempting a catch I declared it a goal. Another (more experienced) teammate questioned my rules knowledge but left it alone when I told him I was 100% sure that I’m right.

I was not right. In fact, I’d even asked the newsgroup about this exact question back in August.

Sigh. Forgiveness has been requested by my team and the other team’s captain, and we won the game 15-10 so I don’t think it was a make-or-break decision… but I still feel bad about it. Hopefully next time around I’ll make the right call. In the meantime I’ll still be calling fouls as I experience them and sticking to my arguments unless they show me in the rules that I’m wrong.