HEIGHTNED AWARENESS WITH NEW RULES
The committee also examined questionable scenarios when officials blow their whistles or time expires as a shot is taking place.
Now in effect, goals or saves will be awarded if they occur while, or immediately after, an official’s whistle is blown.
Goals also count if the shot is released before the game clock expires and it crosses the goal line. Previously, the ball had to cross the goal line before time expired, a ruling that controversially lost Johns Hopkins a game against Northwestern last spring.
“You have to play through everything,” McMahon said. “If the ball’s coming at you, you better save it no matter what. It’s auditory training.”
Players also will now be allowed to self-start in the final two minutes of each half and any overtime period. They can self-start if the ball goes out of bounds on the end line or sideline.
“Everybody’s going to have to be dialed in all the time,” Tucker said. “Every aspect of our game is affected, from the transition game to the draw.”
After a 10-9 overtime loss to Northwestern on March 30, 2017, Johns Hopkins coach Janine Tucker filed a protest about the Wildcats' questionable game-winning goal that was scored as time expired.
TRAINING TIME
The new rules mean heavy edits to the official NCAA rulebook, which committee members hope to deliver to college coaches by fall ball, which will serve as a critical time for clarifications if issues develop. Officials, too, will need time to adjust.
“The key is using the CWLOA (Collegiate Women’s Lacrosse Officiating Association) and fall ball events as training places,” Coyne said. “We always encourage officials and will help them reach out to college coaches if they want to attend practices to get some work in with new rules.
“We expect there will be some misinterpretations or things that aren’t done correctly to start, but we hope to have them hashed out during fall ball so when the season comes, they should be pretty good to go,” Coyne added. “These are some massive changes, some fundamental changes to the women’s game, and that can be overwhelming to an official if you just look at it. If you look at the meat of the rules, what happened this year was there was a huge focus on [taking] some of the subjectivity out of the rules and making things a little more black and white for officials.”
The key for this fall, according to Adams, will be communication between officials, players and coaches as they look to embrace the new rules and have questions answered. By springtime, they hope everyone is on the same page and the rules are being interpreted consistently.
“A lot of people get nervous with change,” Adams said. “There’s the unknown of what does fall look like, coming out and trying to teach your kids new rules, and the change for officials.”
Said Tucker: “Our sport is trying to stay as relevant and cutting edge as possible. It’s trying to cater to the athleticism of the athletes today and their lax IQ. We never want to get stagnant. We want to get really fan-friendly and have a good flow to our sport, so I’m hopeful we can take a little bit of a time out with these rules changes, allow them to sink in and allow people to get a handle on them.”
Across the board, coaches agree there are a lot of changes to absorb this year as the women’s game aims to increase safety for players, while also becoming faster and more fan-friendly.
“I’m sure there are people that will like it and people that think our game has changed really fast and we’re losing some of the uniqueness of women’s lacrosse,” Sailer said. “All that remains to be seen, how people will judge it.”
Said Coyne: “We feel good about these changes. Looking down the road two or three years, this is a rule set that could stand for a very long time and make it a tremendous game to watch.”