Strips, the misunderstood middle child

We’ve all been there at pickup - Someone sends you a soft throw just a little too high to the force side. You track it but your defender’s getting closer. You reach out with one hand, you touch the disc first, you close your grasp. You can almost taste the catch before you sauce an inevitable upline blade for a score. But the defender has more momentum and catches the disc with just a little more strength. They touched it after you but against all odds come away with the disc. Having ruined your plans for throwing that sweet continuation to take half, you blurt “strip”. You don’t say much else for a few seconds, but you start making sock puppet hand motions before pleading that you got there first. The defender has to choose one of two responses: Be an asshole and tell them they’re full out it, or smile and hand the disc back and say “ya, you got it first.” Everybody claims to know what a strip is because this scenario plays out like clockwork every Sunday morning and Tuesdays after dark.

But is this really what the writers of the usau rulebook envisioned when they documented the “strip” as a self officiated call? Let’s review the definitions in the rulebook: Strip - when a “foul causes a player to lose possession” Possession - “sustained contact with, and control of, a non spinning disc” With those two definitions in mind, we know we need to rethink all strip calls as a subset of fouls. And “sustained contact” is incredibly vague, so we’re on our own there.

Hot take #1 - For a strip to happen, there has to be a foul simultaneously called.

Every strip call and subsequent pleading of a case should be accompanied by a foul call. “Strip” or “I caught it first” mean absolutely nothing. If you caught it first, what prevented you from having possession a second or so later? Did the player committing the strip bump your back or elbow? Did they make a dangerous play that would have created contact if you hadn’t backed off? Now those would be real grounds for making a strip call, per the rulebook.

If you’ve read this far, you either think I’m full of shit, or you actually follow the logic and want to know where it ends up.

Hot take #2 - If two players both go for a disc without either commiting a receiving foul/dangerous play (a different topic and conversation), it shouldn’t matter who touches the disc first or even who catches it first. Nobody has sustained contact when it is a bang bang play.

Let’s play out a scenario between 2 players, it doesn’t matter who is on O or D: Player 1 attempts a catch and initially stops rotation of the disc and it is noticeably before player 2’s hand(s) make any contact with the disc. But a split second after player 1 has some established control of the disc, player 2 now also has partial control. Jostling over control for another split second, player 2 actually comes away with complete control of the disc. Player 2 does not commit a foul on player 1’s ability to receive and has only manipulated the disc itself. As per above, there would be no justification behind a strip call because there is no foul occurring to have caused said strip. Award it to player 2.