Replay on the punter showed he clearly kicked the ball after it hit the ground which is still a legal punt. Obviously he made contact because he was 10 yards behind the line of scrimmage and the mosh pit type scramble for the ball occurred past the line of scrimmage but not past the first down marker. Watching on tv none of us could see who did or did not toufch the ball. However a clue to what happened could come from the LWE player standing in the mosh pit area signaling it was his teams ball. First off the kid signaling would have no idea that the kick was a drop-punt rather than a regular punt that went off side of kickers foot. Two and this a conjecture but the LWE players seem pretty intelligent so I m going to assume this. The punting team can only retain possession when the punt passes the line of scrimmage after it is touched and lost by the return team. Since the kid is immediately signaling its LWE ball he must have seen what nobody watching on tv or who was on the Warren side of the field could see..,, which was that a ref determined a Warren player touched the ball and it was then recovered by LWE.
My other point is in regard to Warren coach Bryan McNulry. This is an intellectually smart coach and I while thus is
My opinion I would say if the ref told him what the call was and the rule interpretation was incorrect that mcnulry would have gone to each and every official individually and explained to one and all that the ruling was wrong and needed to be correct.
I m guessing that nobody currently coaching prep football in the Chicago area is better versed with n the rules than Warrens coach. He got the explanation and was satisfied.
The big concern on this board seemed to be that the drop kick was illegal but someone posted the rule that it was a legit punt. Once that was cleared up the rest of the actions in the field make sense. Unfortunately the tv coverage was a hindrance on that plat rather than a help.