High school trick plays are the absolute best. The "wrong ball" variation fooled everyone in the stadium. One player even faked fainting to distract defenders before his team scored.
There's no limit to how creative a high school coach will get when it's time to break out one of these oddball plays. The perfect example of that may be when teams do things like cartwheels to throw entire defenses off. What's crazy is that isn't the only time gymnastics was used in a bizarre trick play.
But apparently flipping instead of running will get you ejected. Why? I don't know.
HS Player Ejected For Backflipping
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Watauga High School and St. Stephens High School squared off against each other in North Carolina back in 2010.
Watauga set out to convert a long two-point conversion from the 17-yard line, so coach Tim Pruitt pulled out the play that asks a player to perform a series of back handsprings while in motion.
The player, kicker Cam Haas, gets off some five or six backflips before the ball is snapped. The referees, however, immediately threw flags on the play.
Not only was the team flagged for a penalty, Haas was ejected from the game. Yahoo! Sports reported that the coach was thrown out of the game as well.
HUH? Where in the North Carolina high school rulebook does it say a player can't do backflips during a play? And why did they eject both the kicker and coach?
Cam Haas, the incredibly athletic kid who was ejected, uploaded the video on YouTube and wrote in the comments that he was ejected for excessive celebration.
"Whatever, it was worth it!" he wrote.
Pruitt explained to GoBlueRidge.net that he knew he was going to get flagged for the play but figured why not on a difficult conversion attempt?
"I don't feel I deserved to be ejected," Pruitt said. "I hate I got kicked out and it's only the second time it's ever happened in my head-coaching career. We were at the 18-yard line. How many times are you going to make a two-point conversion from the 18?
"We met with the officials before the game and they didn't say anything about trick plays. I was the one that brought it up. I knew we were going to get flagged, but I decided to run the play anyway. Looking back at it, obviously it wasn't a good decision. But if he had told me he was kicking me out of the game for it, I would have never ran it."
In my opinion, the referees should have flagged the team, let out a good chuckle and moved on. High school players have remained in games despite doing far worse things, so to boot both of them was a bit much.
That being said, I would have loved to see if the back flip trick play would've worked.
