Hand Gesture of the Week: Warding Off

It's been a couple weeks since I posted anything...I'm thinking of changing this series to "Hand Gesture of the Month" - let's see if I can get back into the swing of things after vacation & a job change.

Ok...so let's talk about the technical foul called WARDING OFF or WARDING for short. When I first heard this foul, I thought I heard "awarding" and I'm like "Wow, they stop the game and give awards to the players?" Alright, totally kidding there, but I really wasn't sure what it was. All I could tell was one player was invading another player's personal space and the invadee got in trouble for pushing the invader away. I just imagine him saying, "Get outta my face dude" but with much more color. Believe it or not my son taught me about WARDING a couple years ago when we were playing in the yard. He would get so mad at me when I had the ball and he'd try and poke me in the ribs under my arm. So I would drop my arm and trap his stick under it and pull it out of his hands. I found great humor in doing this but he'd always yell, "Mom! You're warding, you can't do that!" I'm like, "But it's funny." Him, with all his pre-teen-I'm-practicing-my-sarcasm charm would reply, "No Mom, it's really not." Finally he took the time to explain what it was. Even after all that and still to this day, if he pokes me and I can stick his crosse under my arm and pull it out I will. It's getting harder as his pokes are getting stronger and he knows my trick.

So what the heck is WARDING OFF officially? Per US Lacrosse, it's "a player in possession of the ball shall not use his free hand, arm or any other part of his body to hold, push or control the direction of the movement of the crosse or body of the player applying the check." Other words, in most cases the invadee has to suck it up. There are a few exceptions: 

• If the player who has the ball keeps both hands on his stick / crosse
• Keeps his head up and doesn't make contact with the other player
• Administers a proper bull dodge

This video from US Lacrosse does a great job of taking you through WARDING OFF.

Here's a very short video of the gesture the referee makes for the WARDING foul.

Hope you've learned a bit more about lacrosse. If there's any signal / foul you'd like to know more about, let me know. Until next time, keep your head up and your hands on the stick.

References

• US Lacrosse Boys Rules