Catcher interference

[Rockjerry]

We had an incident tonight where a hitter had two strikes on her. The next pitch came in, on the outside corner for strike three. However, the hitter lunged back (rather than to the outside corner) and struck the catcher in the arm just above the elbow. The catcher had just caught the ball and did not stick her hand out to catch the ball. I have never seen a catcher hit in the upper arm by a swing before. Just the glove/hand and maybe wrist.
Anyway, it was ruled catcher interference which I didn't dispute. But I do wonder if there is an instance where when a swing strikes the catcher where it wouldn't be interference. I know the backswing isn't. The next time she was up she actually took a step back as part of her swing. She didn't hit that catcher but I had her move back one full step to avoid what happened to the first one (she suffered a small fracture).
This is town travel ball so teams do have kids who can't hit or field or throw.

 

[canyonjoe]

I would assume any non deliberate contact is CI. We had an ump last week who just pushed the catcher forward. DD got one when she was catching that just tipped her glove, but when she was at bat she hit actually knocked the glove off the C and still hit the ball. I thought she broke the kids hand but she was OK. My DD has pretty fast hands and often hits balls deep in zone so she gets a fair amount of CI's who reach out for the ball.

 

[Axe]

Catcher's responsibility to be out of the way. I think the umpire would have to see something really over the top deliberate to rule otherwise.

 

[quincy]

Struggle.

C needs to stay out of way of batter, but they also need to be close.

 

[Rockjerry]

This hitter lunged backwards a lot. I don't think she was doing anything intentional. As I said, the catcher did not move forward to catch the ball. There were n o issues, none even close with any other hitter prior to this one. She was in the usual catchers position. If she got hit in the glove then she was to far forward or tried to reach out to grab the ball. But the swing hit her above the elbow so she would have had to slide her whole body forward.
It was definitely the hitter that created the contact.
I will have to ask other coaches who faced this team if they had similar observations

 

[Comp]

In virtually all instances yes the catcher needs to stay out of the batters way, but if the umpire judges it was a deliberate act by the batter to draw a catchers obstruction call it would not be catchers obstruction. The OP seems to indicate the catcher had already caught the ball before the batter ever attempted to swing the bat, if so no chance of being catchers obstruction and if runners on base could very possibly be interference on a retired batter.

 

[BretMan]

Almost all softball sanctioning bodies call this catcher obstruction, with a couple of rare exceptions. Almost all baseball sanctioning bodies call this catcher interference, but again there are exceptions. It's just one of those things...

Catcher obstruction occurs when the catcher prevents or impedes the batter from striking at the pitch. Generally, once the catcher has already caught the ball, the batter's opportunity to hit the pitch has ended. An exception might be if the catcher was reaching out and catching the ball over the plate, before it has actually passed the batter.

Just from the description, it sounds like this should not have been catcher obstruction.