NCAA WOMEN’S LACROSSE RULES
RULE 2: EQUIPMENT AND UNIFORMS
SECTION 12:
Once a goal is scored, the official will take possession of the goal-scoring stick and will perform a pocket-depth check.
Since the inception of more frequent stick inspections to keep up with innovations in stick and pocket construction which have stretched the legality of published rules, this rule has led to a celebratory maneuver called “the stick drop.”
Some players throw their crosses down on the ground like a child discarding an unwanted toy. Some spike the stick on the molded head, at the risk of breaking the plastic. Others slide the stick towards the official like a person playing shuffleboard.
Thing is, Section 12 does not actually mandate the exact way that a player makes a stick available to the game officials. All it says is that the official takes possession of the stick. Now, later in the rules, the language says this about imposing an illegal-stick penalty:
In the event that a goal was scored with an illegal stick, including if the player who shot the goal does not drop their stick or hand their stick to the nearest official in a timely fashion, or the goal scorer or any teammate adjusts
the goal-scoring stick in any way before dropping the stick or handing it to the official, the goal shall not count.
That sentence implies two different ways of delivery: 1) dropping the stick, or 2) handing the stick directly to the official.
But Friday evening, in a game pitting Austin-Peay against Furman, sophomore forward Lily Toole, upon scoring a free position from the 5 o’clock hashmark, threw the stick and hit one of the umpires who was standing eight meters from the cage near goal line extended.
It was a different kind of intensity for the stick drop. And it is a situation which is actually illegal in the men’s game.
Rule 5-10 in the men’s rules for U.S. Lacrosse (which does flow into NCAA and NFHS rules), players are not allowed to throw a stick at the ball, at a player, or other game personnel. The player can receive a time penalty from anywhere from one to three minutes, presumably tied to the severity of the foul.
Now, I have never understood why the women’s rulesmakers have never mandated a hand-to-hand transfer of the lacrosse stick to the closest official.
Hopefully, these kinds of situations will soon become moot with the proposed rule to eliminate stick checks after every goal beginning with the 2027 season.