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HS Alternatives . . . Structural Changes Required?

Endorfuns · 2012-02-17T13:18:32-05:00

Troll last week (“Got kicked off my track team...”) raised an interesting issue – what can athletes do at the HS level if they and the coach are at odds, for whatever reason? Unfortunately, the answer is not much. HS sports are run under the auspices of the NFHS and its various Federation affiliates. They proscribe rules that protect coaches, including that athletes must sit out a year for a transfer and no meets can be run with HS athletes that are not on a participating Federation-affiliated team. That includes Penn and Arcadia and all joint college meets. So the home-schooled kids are out of luck, as are athletes that run for a non-Federation affiliated HS, as are the athletes that have an inept yet all-powerful coach. In the latter case, if the athletes don't like it they can transfer to an adjoining school, sit out a year, and then face another coach that knows the first coach real well and will probably do the same thing. Or they can quit. There was a poster on the above thread last week that replied, “the OP fails at trolling because he's just like the kids and bitter coach hating, "I could have run 4:12 and gone on to Stanford if it wasn't for my coach telling me what to do" former kids that populate LetsRun.” It’s absurd that any athletes are left thinking that way. Why don’t they have an alternative to the vagaries of an inept yet authoritarian coach? Several years ago I recall a well-respected coach decry “so many great runners are ruined because they had an incompetent HS coach.” Before you get too excited, that quote can be attributed to a thousand coaches across the country and I've heard it so many, many times over the past 10 years that I've lost count. Why are kids penalized for wanting to be inspired, motivated and challenged by a good coach? Why don’t we have free transfer rules? Better yet, why can’t athletes stay at their neighborhood schools and still compete? Why can’t home schooled athletes and non-Federation HS kids compete in the state meets and at all of the HS invites? Why can't we athletes train for a club team and still compete? The Federations are supported with school dollars, which means its taxpayer money. They are publicly funded. This is essentially a form of discrimination structurally built into our education system. Is there something that can be done to change the system? The Federations' rules are forcing kids out of the sport, or forcing kids to run for inept coaches, and worse yet, forcing kids to reflect like the poster above describes. Perhaps every athlete should have a choice - run for their HS coach or find an alternative and run unattached in the HS invites and state and local championship races. I can understand excluding the dual and tri-meets, but that's about it. Maybe it's appropriate to have standards for unattached runners (ala the larger college invitationals like the Jordan Payton) similar to the state preliminary standards that move up with each level of competition. But why shouldn’t every athlete have the opportunity to run? Is this something that requires referral to our judicial system? There already is a lawsuit pending in one jurisdiction against an NFHS affiliate regarding the arbitrariness of the transfer rules as it applies to football players. That might help, but it won’t solve the problem. How can athletes get into meets that they otherwise are shut out by the Federations' rules? Would the ACLU take this up? Is this a matter that requires an individual suing and enjoining one of the larger HS meets (Penn or Arcadia)? Fairly easy to see with those meets whether the athletes meet the standard. Thoughts? Sorry for the lengthy post.

High School Running Distance

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anon

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14 years ago 02/28/2012 6:48pm EST
re: Californication

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Well, if the parents have chosen to remove their children from the school, why should they get to represent that very same school? School should not be an a la carte menu.

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