Idiocy: School board bans Virignia HS xc runners from running on city streets

This article (and the more detailed on linked from the picture) are really poorly written.

It seems only the public high school students have been banned from the streets? Or is this some sort of city-wide ordinance? What happens if you're caught running? Kicked off the team? Fined?

What if the local running club organizes some protest runs?

"For safety reasons, we have moved the practice venue to those locations. It is safer for our athletes"

Surely, banning cars from the streets would be far safer. Then, kids walking to school, teams busing to practice venues, little old ladies crossing the street, all will be safer!

One of our runners a few years ago was hit by a car. A very traumatic, scary experience. The saddest part once the lawyers got involved and started asking things like, "did you ever tell them to look before they crossed the street?"

Luckily he was fine and I had it all documented through various channels that we discuss runner safety nearly every run. The parents were mad but ultimately it was on their kid.

Through the tradegy we now get busses off campus to run. It is quite costly but cheaper than a lawsuit I presume. Running on the soft surfaces is not only better but kids don't like the roads, they want to run the trails. Since going off campus our team has quadrupled in size.

Perhaps this can be made into a positive. If they expect the cross country tea to run laps around the track I'd be quick to point out that the odds of injury caused by a football player is more likely.

These people are xc runners...they should be running on Earth/dirt. I understand the ban..makes perfect sense.

Here's their website with more info and maps of the banned running routes:

http://saveourstreets.net/

Skeptic of it All wrote:

If they expect the cross country tea to run laps around the track I'd be quick to point out that the odds of injury caused by a football player is more likely.

They should build the track far away from the football field then. Safety first.

------- wrote:

These people are xc runners...they should be running on Earth/dirt. I understand the ban..makes perfect sense.

So you're going to do a 15 mile run around a field? Yea, that'll work. Besides, there is very little undeveloped land in the area referred to. It's basically a concrete jungle, so that makes your solution essentially impossible.

Badwriting, you obviously don't understand school districts and their position when it comes to liability.

If you work in any administrative position for ANY company you would understand. In today's times many people have become "sue" happy and will sue anyone for anything!

The district has the obligation to protect itself and taxpayers from litigation. If the district is aware that having kids run on city streets unsupervised/supervised is a liability then it needs to take action to avoid losing precious taxpayer money to vicious parents who are willing to sue a school district if "bobby" twists his ankle on a curb.

I remember running in high school many times on city streets and I once was "honked" at and turned my head for one second and triped on a uneven curb and slammed to the concrete. I "could" have sued my district on grounds that I was unsupervised and was "told" to run on streets that were unsafe. Because I am apart of the school during team practices, I am still under the schools insurance and their liability.

Parents cannot sign their children's rights away when it comes to safety. Even though many of the waivers do ask this of parents, they don't hold water in courts.

XC probably is one of the few sports that has liabilities beyond the confines and supervision of the basketball courts, baseball fields, and swimming pools most American sports are use to.

I am not surprised that a district would take a stand on this issue since its always been a grey area. I would be surprised if they one day confine XC high school runners to only the track. That would be a sad day for running when my high school son has to do a 12 mile run on the track on a Tuesday afternoon.

The only way to combat this is to teach children road safety, hold team meetings where you spend an hour each month teaching road safety, then have multiple volunteers follow small groups of runners on the city streets to remind the students of these rules while monitoring them.

Its the times we live in. I taught special ed for many years and parents there are always looking for ways to get districts to pay for "everything" at the expense of other taxpayers. Its sad because lawyers have such a deep hand in the everything nowadays that you have to protect yourself from sue-happy people.

I don't even allow friends on my property who I don't know for reasons that I am liable if they trip on my side walk or jam their finger in a door way.

False. There are no more lawsuits than before. This is right wing bullcrap.

You are comparing special education to general liability lawsuits. Fail

These cities and board have insurance as well.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg School (CMS) District in Charlotte, NC has made a similar rule. After a high school runner was hit and killed by a car during cross country practice a few years ago the school board made a rule that all XC and Track athletes must run on campus only, during practice, or they can run at a local park/greenway if the school transports and supervises them there.

With the size of many of the teams and cuts to budgets not many schools can or will provide transportation so the majority of practices happen on school property.

Can you imagine being a good high school runner who runs 60-70 miles a week and being told you have to do almost all of it around a half mile loop around the school and school parking lot.

Several better runners in the area have transferred to private schools a some others chose not to run for their school.

But hey, the school board isn't liable for them anymore so that is the main thing right.

My daughter a few years back volunteered to provide much needed medical services to the Appalachian poor, and her work was centered in Radford. The university in Radford has a very good nursing school, and the New River hospital is modern and efficient. It was a great way for my daughter to learn to deal with high acuity patients and do the right thing.

When I visited her during her volunteer days, I was struck by the fact that while a bucolic rural area, it wasn't such an easy place to run. Country roads don't have sidewalks, and people drive fast without much warning to the runners. This was completely unlike the candy soft suburban area where I was raised and running on the streets in neighborhoods with low density one acre homes was both safe and easy. High school kids ought to be free to run on the streets (carefully), but such is the challenge of living in the most litigious society in the world.

I might add that Claytor Lake State Park 10 miles away is a nice place to run. But it isn't so easy to get a bunch of kids there on a consistent basis, or over to Va Tech to run either.

I am glad I ran in the 70's, and enjoyed incredible freedoms.

I don't think "such is life" is a reasonable response. It's not like this is a common policy, nor should it become one -- as long as kids are still allowed to play football, banning road running is absurd.

You can't run on the roads, but oh, want to damage your brain and risk catastrophic injury every Friday night? Go right ahead.

I've only skimmed the thread and haven't read the article, but I don't see what's so strange here. My high school had specific rules prohibiting us from leaving campus during practice--that meant no running on streets and sidewalks. A loop around campus was ~1.5 miles so I'd routinely run 5-7 laps around campus each practice. It wasn't so bad.

The purpose of schools are to teach young people life lessons. One of the many lessons schools are required to teach are how people can live a healthy and active lifestyle after they graduate. Cross country runners have chosen the activity (or sport) of running to maintain a lifestyle that can continue for the rest of their lives. The responsibility of schools is to teach their students how to run SAFELY on the roads so we have citizens who can look out for their own safety as adult runners on the roads. We don't tell football player not to tackle, we teach them how to tackle properly to minimize neck and head injuries. The Radford BOE is neglecting their responsibility as educators and might actually do more harm than good when students leave high school without the knowledge they need to exercise safely as adults.

CT Coach wrote:

The purpose of schools are to teach young people life lessons.

Thank you CT coach. It amazes me that people forget the job is to educate.

Shouldn't we trust kids or educate them if they don't know how to properly run on the street without getting run over. Will tragedies still occur? Yes, people get killed in traffic accidents in cars all the time whether on foot or not.

But the schools - particularly a high school - is supposed to be educating these people to be successful in the real world/college. In my mind, they are basically saying, "Hey there is no way we can teach them how to properly run on the street so we aren't going to let them do it."

It's just beyond stupidity.

rojo wrote:

Thank you CT coach. It amazes me that people forget the job is to educate.

Schools are weird. They basically say, "It's ok to get pregnant at age 14 (because if you do we'll give you childcare)" but don't let kids run on the street.

Bizarre.

This ALMOST happened to our team in high school. The administration was telling us that we needed to do all of our runs on the grass on campus because they had gotten a couple of phone call complaints from less than attentive drivers about us running early in the morning. We fought back vehemently and the compromise was that we had to wear reflective vests all times that we ran, even in the afternoon, and an LED headlight when we ran in the morning. It was such a f*cking pain in the ass.

Same thing happened at my high school. The Athletic Director told us we were no longer allowed to run on roads and we also were not allowed to drive to parks to run. We also could not use our track for workouts because they were building new football bleachers.

My coach just said to us something like, "My job is to get you guys to run as fast as possible. Jogging around the soccer fields won't do that. We will run on the streets, drive to state parks, and drive to nearby high schools to use their tracks for speed workouts. If they fire me then they fire me. I don't care."

We tried to be secretive about it and never did get into any trouble.

truth mann wrote:

Schools are weird. They basically say, "It's ok to get pregnant at age 14 (because if you do we'll give you childcare)" but don't let kids run on the street.

Bizarre.

It's only bizarre because you're trying to compare apples to oranges.