Written by Troy Lorents, 2^nd Year Official

At an event last year, I was reminded of the difference between a team getting 5 team points for a technical fall vs. 6 team points for the pin.  The match seemed pretty straight forward.  One wrestler was winning by 12 points and we were half-way through the 3 period.

I was on the mat, watching the winning wrestler trying to tighten up a half.  I was holding 3 fingers waiting to award the near fall points, feeling the opponent wasn’t going to get pinned.  I sat up on my knees and looked over at the scorer’s table.  In my head I added up the three points making the score now 16-1.

This is where I made a potential mistake.  As the top wrestler started to roll the bottom wrestler back to his base, I called out the 3 points near fall and stopped the match.  Was this the right thing to do?

The coach of the winning wrestler felt his wrestler was going to pin the opponent and therefore would have given the team 6 points vs. 5 points.  The rule is:

 stop the match, based on the 15 point technical fall, unless you are in a near fall situation.

In the future, I will be more careful on judging when the wrestler returns to a “defendable base”.