Religious exemptions for HS meets

I agree this seems sketchy.

I remember missing the state track meet as a kid because my religious parents wouldn't let me participate. The meet was on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, if memory serves. Anyway, feel sorry for the kids.

If one was an observant (orthodox) Jew, they would not race on a Saturday, even if they can walk/run to the race. It is just not in the spirit of the Sabbath (even if they went to early services and then was able to run to the race). Though, I have known a few folks that consider themselves orthodox (in Manhattan) that have jogged to races in Central Park. Others do go for a training run on the Sabbath, but most don't.

That being said, I can't imagine that consideration being made to an orthodox Jewish private day school. But maybe this opens the door. I disagree with the accommodation, as others have said, where does it end?

Eric Liddell says don't ask to run all special by yourself. Either don't race at all, or race a different event on a non Sabbath day.

So they got invited to the California State meet and that meet is also taking place on a Saturday. Are they also going to run that meet at an empty Woodward Park on Friday or will they choose to participate with everyone else that day because its the State final?

They had one girl qualify for State. From what I hear she will be running the State meet on Friday as well.

Its probably always been an issue for Adventist school teams. There just aren't that many Adventist schools out there, and the few that there are usually are so small that they struggle to field teams.

Interesting. Their soccer teams even have a home meet - against another adventist school on a saturday. I've been led to believe that this would be frowned upon, but perhaps some enforce their rules less strictly than others.

Not sure how they did it exactly: TL;DR article.

I could get behind something like this IF (1) the times were taken, (2) plugged in to final results, (3) team/individual would have qualified using this metric, and (4) none of the teams/individuals in the actual meet were bumped out because of it.

In short, accommodations like this, within reason, I think only work if they are additive, not subtractive.

Hopefully they did something like that.

Also, sounds like the final is on Saturday, too . . . so, yeah. That creates problems.

You know, there *are* private religious school championships they could choose to participate in. In fact, many of these are national-level competitions bringing schools from all over.

So, there are choices.

I looked at the schedules for teams at 3 more adventist universities. They all have some saturday games on schedules (though not for every team ). They have fewer saturday games and more Sunday games than typical.

What I could find is that adventists observe the sabbath from friday evening to saturday evening. So perhaps they can get around this sabbath rule so long as events start after a certain time/at night.

Seems adventists could run college track by competing in twilight meets (on sat), running the 5000 (the second to last event outdoors traditionally), etc., if this exception could be used

I also found (nearly) all adventists avoid work and business on the sabbath, but only most avoid sport. There are also exceptions for humanitarian and medical aid - so competing in a race where proceeds or awareness go to these causes might be excepted.

I found that there are multiple denominations or branches of seventh day adventism, some that take Sunday as the sabbath day (while most still hold it as saturday or friday evening to saturda evening).

Basically some adventists can compete on Saturday, some can compete with certain stipulations, some can not compete at all on Sat. And for some Friday evening or Sunday may be out too.

if you look up their meet results, they had only qualified one boy to the second round plus the girls' team. as someone pointed out, their fast boy usually runs a JV type time, low 19, 18-something on a good day. the girls then flamed out at the second round in 6th.

the powers that be may have mixed sentiment with lawsuit avoidance and cynicism, and told themselves, they aren't long for this. you give a dispensation, they then advance few kids on. i think there is maybe 1 girl left? the team bombed out but the one girl finished 2nd and that presumably progresses by herself.

which, i wonder what they did the first round? same? and what would the lone girl continuing get?

it's a 329-kid school. when i wondered why the disparity in a 1a texas school track time, i figured out, many don't even have a track.

Here are the results of the girl that qualified for State from SJS Sections on Friday running by herself.

first off, subtle point you only notice if your select soccer league/tournaments played sundays, but we already avoid sundays for school sports. shifted to saturdays. which keeps you off school days.

if you cross this bridge on added religious grounds then you're running meets on school days. you can run track at night -- we typically did our first track area progression meet under the lights as it heated up. but you can't do that for XC through the woods or over terrain. you have to see where you're going without lights. so it would have to be daytime and you're having kids miss classes to suit one team.

it does appear that historically they did friday TF meets. but they have been on results for saturday cross meets a couple years running. did they have the same dispensation before?

i personally don't think freedom of worship means the power to insist you run a different day than everyone else, but it seems to be the workaround they have come up with. it's probably allowed because only the one girl is good enough to keep progressing.

but the closer you get to state, i had a conference meet in college where day 1 was warm but overcast, squall comes through, day 2 is a cool sunny day with a hurricane headwind. people were running an increment slower at everything day 2 except maybe the 10000.

but then some state meets are so big they are running on weekdays anyway.

Impressive I guess - unless this is a killer course, its kind of a weak division. Her closest teammate was over 5 minutes back. So now she will run state alone on Saturday?

It is , however, different to see Christians pulling this and being catered to in 2025. That was an unexpected twist.

They could have run seperately friday and then been lasted in with the saturday results for those saturday meets, like they did this time. Looking at the results, you'd have no idea that girl who qualified for state ran alone.

Also there are a few meets "under the lights" for xc - basically small loop courses with lighted paths, streetlights, stadium lights, etc.

I would also question the validity of the results.

I've seen too many small youth meets over the years report crazy times from athletes that we've competed with for years that had their one and only breakout amazing performance that skyrocketed them up the rankings coincidentally at a low attendance hand timed meet.

Oh wow. You seem nice. Well, in a world that lets men run in the women's race, this seems like small potatoes.

It's a very tough course and yes D5 is very weak. She will State alone on Friday from what I have heard.

They would have to have some kind of official present for it to be an official Section meet.