With the original draft in February, Rules Committee was trying to be very surgical and precise when our proposal to ban “sternum busters” type hits without affecting other aspects of gameplay. In that draft, we proposed a ban against “strikes with the shoulder” that were targeted to the upper chest area and sternum. Rules received an overwhelming amount of feedback and concern from membership, especially regarding the difficulty it would be to correctly identify these actions based on the modified target zone (i.e. upper chest and sternum). Rules Committee agreed and removed the proposed language.
Instead, Rules Committee is taking a boarder but simpler approach with this proposed draft and is instead expanding the strike definition to include other body parts. We feel this is much simpler and easier to implement for both skaters and officials. And we felt this would still be a positive step towards addressing membership’s concerns with concussion and head/neck injuries in gameplay.
Other considerations we had were:
- A primary reason Strikes are illegal are because they use a focused blocking zone (i.e. pointy body part) to intentional punch/jab/strike an opponent to cause them harm/injury.
- The point of the shoulder is just as pointy as elbows and knees, and shoulder strikes carry an additional risk of contact to the throat/neck/head.
- Therefore expanding the definition of Strikes to include all body parts makes sense.
Based on my own personal observations, shoulder-strikes aren’t super common in WFTDA-gameplay anyway, so I don’t foresee much if any change to the game today. When I do see shoulder-strikes though, they don’t often appear to have any strategic value in terms of blocking an opponent, but the recipient of the hit is often bruised and hurt from the hit.
I went through some old WFTDA post-season footage to find examples of shoulder-strikes but didn’t really find anything, but I do have three examples from a recent junior tournament.
In this clip, the red jammer 10 executes three shoulder-strikes to their opponent. The third strike makes high contact to the face of white blocker 76 and the jammer is subsequently called an a high block. But the first two hits appear to be legal hits to the shoulder and upper cheat area.
Here’s another clip from the same tournament. In this one, white jammer 10 executes a shoulder strike to the black blocker 222 at the rear of the pack.
And here’s a third clip I’ve pulled. In this one, white blocker 732 executes two hits to the chest of purple jammer 16. Camera angle isn’t great for the first hit, but the second hit appears to be a shoulder strike (almost a reversed can-opener).
In these clips, there is clear execution of the point of the shoulder to an opponent. These are the types of hit we mean when we say “shoulder strike”.