Team banned from leaving campus

Go find the man in question and beat his ass for real this time......

Man up boy. Someone does you wrong, even the score and then some.

1. We passed from the front

2. Passing him was unavoidable

3. I go to public school in one of the poorest counties in the country[/quote]

One of the poorest counties in the country and you 1. have sidewalks to run on 2. have multiple track coaches and a dedicated distance coach? I find that hard to believe. You may want to find a list of the poorest counties and re-evaluate your stance on that.

Here is some free advice of which you can take or leave:

Have them arrange the face to face apology session. Before you apologize, look the guy right in the eye and ask him if he was literally and purposely thrown to the ground by you or one of your teammates, or if he was just startled. If possible, have him recall exactly what happened. Make constant eye contact with him. Hopefully he will recant his story, or at least your coach(es) will be able to see that he is lying. If he sticks to the BS story, then swallow your pride and say, "Then I guess I'll have to apologize." Then go for a long off-campus run.

Do not apologize to anybody. Quit the team if you must, but it is better to be honest.

You should find that old man and break his knee caps for snitching.

Meet the man in person. Ask why he says you threw him to the ground when you did not.

Is it possible, being older, he felt intimidated with two teenagers run at him? Being a coach I can tell you high schoolers are not the best at passing courteously.

Is it possible after you passed he fell down? Then you laughing made it worse?

Meet the man in person. Get his perspective. Look him in his eye. Be honest and not defensive.

Then apologize. Regardless he was upset, be sorry for that. I'm sure you don't mean to go around purposely upsetting old people.

Is this really something over which you want to fall on your sword?

An "old man" obviously didn't like how close you came to him before parting and is embellishing his story. Depending on his mental state, he may not even know that he is embellishing what happened.

At this point what is the cost of going to him and saying "we are sorry for offending you the other day and for any harm we might have caused."?

If he demands that you admit to throwing him to the ground and laughing as you ran off, don't do that.

pouut wrote:

Do not apologize to anybody. Quit the team if you must, but it is better to be honest.

This..... if you appoligoze, you admit guilt. You also open up your school for litigation.

Beat the mans ass for real.....

Coach wrote:

Young kids and their foolish pride. Apologize, say you didn't mean it and didn't even know He fell.

This is the only answer, part of growing up is realizing that the best option is usually to take responsibility and make it right even if you didn't do anything wrong. The earlier you learn this the better off you'll be.

Billy Fap wrote:

Get a lawyer

Yes, threaten the old liar with a lawsuit.

And, yes, I know this is a troll.

6/10 is about right.

ggad wrote:

Definitely don't apologize if you didn't do it. Tell the coach that if the man is claiming assault against you, and if you are being punished for said assault, that you and your parents would like to involve the police. Its not a high school's place to punish students for criminal offenses. In fact, by law they have to report it for the police to handle anyways so if they haven't done that then they are in the wrong already. If the coach really chose the other mans word over yours just like that then i would make him apologize as well, not that an apology means anything but he should have to be the one to swallow his pride

Yeah, call their bluff.

total b.s. by a nasty old man(I'm one myself). Revenge,Bucko's. Find him and fvck him up. Or maybe get a lawyer. Grab his cane and beat him with it.where's your parents. They should be in the ADs face. Go to the local sports reporyer. Give him a thumbs down on his facebook page.

Call together the meeting.

Get the old man in the room. Apologize and ask him if he would like some cranberry juice, because he's obviously on his period. Then, get up, run over the table and the old man and never come back.

SWAZ wrote:

D3 NE Liberal Artist 420 wrote:

You're a senior. If your coach after 3.5 years thinks it's possible that you grew am old man to the ground and laughed as you ran off, you must be a total douche.

I should probably clarify: Our former head coach got fired for being incompetent, and our current coach only met me last week at our first outdoor practice. My distance coach who has known me since my sophomore year believes me, but has next to no power.

I'm a coach, I guess I can see maybe he's afraid to rock the boat with the AD.

If I were you, I'd ask to meet with the coach and AD. Explain your position- clearly and in an adult manner.

You can get your parents involved later.

We had a similar situation about 10 years ago- an old guy would call the school all the time complaining about what my runners did to him.

I have a record of every practice and where the kids run.

Once, he got specific about what street they were on.

No one on my team ran on that street that day.

I told him so myself and he never called back.

Apologize then push him to the ground and say eat dirt old man!

You can't be punished for the same crime 2x so you get to appease them and push down a geezer.

Your options seem to be apologizing to the guy even if he didn't fall or not apologizing and having the entire team confined to running on campus. If the idea of apologizing for something you didn't do is so repulsive that you're willing to limit yours and your teammates' runs to your campus, then stand your ground even if you think doing so may lessen your chances of placing well at your state meet. Evidently you've figured that out too as you say you're going to apologize. That would seem to end the episode. What sort of advice are you looking for now? The only advice I can think to give you now is to take pride in sacrificing for the team and moving on. When you're 90 you won't even remember this happened, or possibly much of anything else either.

Be mindful of the elderly wrote:

Years back in elementary school one of my teachers told us to be careful walking past elderly people. Give them plenty of space as they could fall over and be seriously hurt.

Apologize to the guy. And if you're having problems every year consider that you may be the problem.

I'm completely confused as to why anyone is throwing blame at the OP. Unless there's more to the story he's not saying can someone explain what they did wrong? They just happened to run past a person who happens to be a liar and is basically screwing them.

Now OP if denying the incident as he describes it isn't getting you anywhere just suck it up and apologize. Even though you're in the right and the guy doesn't deserve it just move on. There's some fights not worth fighting.

Grow Up wrote:

Your team is being held accountable for being stupid.

Man up and accept it - Congrats to the coach

Horse manure. The old guy is being a real buttwipe and the school and coach should not enable his behavior.

Had my entire HS xc team restricted to campus bc 2 morons decided to run down the highway instead of where the team run was designed to go...an old lady clipped one of them in the elbow with her passenger side mirror.

And of course to this day the 2 morons will tell you they "did nothing wrong".

There are always 2 sides to a story. (and as my lawyer brother will tell you, sometimes there are more than 2 sides)

As an older runner myself, my greatest fear when out on a run is falling. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in a nursing home with a broken hip because some stray dog or idiot kid caused me to fall.

When sharing the sidewalk/road/street/trail with elderly people,

PASS CAREFULLY...if it is a narrow sidewalk or path, SLOW DOWN AND WALK PAST THEM.

MAKE EYE CONTACT AND WISH THEM A GOOD MORNING/AFTERNOON/DAY...and act like you mean it.

CONTINUE RUNNING AND CONGRATULATE YOURSELF FOR ACTING LIKE A RESPECTFUL CITIZEN.