Mallard Creek 4x400 DQ'd from North Carolina state meet for celebrating; team loses meet by 2 points

i assume they are going with some sort of logistical argument -- we already handed out the medals -- but when the subject of the protest is you finished clearly first in the race and won state, you either continue to win state or are DQ'd. similar on the race itself.

and this will sound cold blooded but second place knows they lost it "on the field of play" and only briefly had it for a quirk. kind of bleeding heart stuff to add the "co." courage of your convictions. you won the race which was run to completion. the penalty was for a post race action. the protest was successful. that has implications.

it's not like once upon a time we won a soccer tournament where the ref awarded a PK and red card 10 minutes into the game, we scored, and the penalized team got pulled off the field by the coach and effectively forfeited. in that context if we had video review, and decided the PK and red were bad, the game fell apart at what post protest would have been 0-0 and incomplete.

but this was raced to finish and it's not even close who won. if it's not excessive celebration we should be done here.

personally

(a) reffing should be consistent across a season.

or

(b) reffing should loosen a little at the peak to reflect the big moment.

this is like you are reffing the NBA finals and suddenly decide, after allowing contact in the rounds, we're gonna call every hand check or iffy pick or body contact. it would be a free throw line parade.

or i had a young ref once in select calling every time i bodied an opponent on defense. i think the game ended up 6-5 our favor because no one could play physical without a whistle.

rules and readings should stay fairly stable across a season. i did say earlier "deal with it" but that's coping. i don't think things should change because you get actual officials involved. and in most sports i have played, you get to the higher level and the refs loosen up, not nit pick you to death.

Somebody like his dad needs to talk with this kid about how to act.

Lol, Huh??

The thing that I hate about this is that it could put HS kids off track and field.

We had a rule about no jewellery being worn. It's a running race. Everyone had to take rings, necklaces, earrings off. Why? I can't see one possible reason that they could cause harm. Different for hoop earrings in netball or rings in contact sports.

And vests had to be tucked in or DQ. They could come loose during the race.

Some of the rules seem pointless.

I completely agree with no throwing the baton, no extreme swear words, no physical contact with competitors, no taunting of competitors. But I don't think this was harmful or any of those things. I feel really sorry for the kid and the team whose last memory of HS track is now this instead of their victorious relay squad and winning the state competition? Hopefully they go on to compete in T&F at university and make many more happy memories but you can't get your last HS meet back.

Can it be overturned?

Just managed to get video to work - poor kid - he barely did anything - not aimed at other competitors - was looking forwards - just raised his hand with five fingers. No way worth a DQ - outrageous. Feel really sorry for them all.