MD XC kid dq'd for shorts - RAMPAGE!!!

I am not sure the analogy is good. With the gate, the guard and the girl both new the rule and neither had any idea their actions would lead to her death. You might argue that with certain gates they could have known it would kill her or that someone else had died this way. But with the race I doubt the runner was trying to see how much he could get away with.

I can imagine several who would be protected by rules about stitching on shorts but the protection is minor. I think the bigger issue is not who is protected but does the punishment fit the infraction? As someone wrote on the other thread this could have been avoided if the rule read that officials can point out this infraction up until the gun is fired. If after having the infraction pointed out the individual still runs they get DQed. But once the gun is fired that means the officials recognize all the uniforms as acceptable. Right now the rule is set up as a deterant and punishment is much worse than the protection the rule provides.

Good comparison, because being disqualified from a high school xc race can have roughly the same impact on one's life as being crushed to death. Where should we send flowers for this girl's funeral?

Somewhere there's a happy medium between following rules to the degree of threatening someone's personal safety and well being and getting on a slippery slope because you "just let it slide" on violations of a rule in sport. Maybe not in the crumbling empire of the USA, but somewhere.

santa gertrudis wrote:

Seneca street and Bisp

Yes, you are pithy little sophists who believe citing Godwins law settles the debate. But if you seriously think a team deserves to lose a conference title because of stitching on his shorts then you, like the official hiding behind his rulebook, are the real pussies. And you have probably never ran competitively either.

It's "run," my illiterate friend, and it's B.I.S.P., thank you very much. You're probably one of those sackless, braindead whiners who says, "but I was only doing 5 mph over the limit," to law enforcement officials and wonder why it never works. Go cry to your senator, crank.

6hv ah8a9fna wrote:

On the other thread someone wrote,"the rule should be that uniform violations can only be addressed before the gun goes off. make the list of uniform violations as ridiculous as you want, but don't allow enforcement once the race starts." Please add this to your comments. We have to do more than tell them it is wrong and why but how to fix it.

So that is how we fix it??

Brilliant! Make it so that kids have to follow the rules before competition, but they can do whatever they want after the race has started. Kids would hide stuff from officials until the race started or have items thrown to them. Hey, why not pull out all the jewlrey, headbands, arm warmers, and skull caps with all the logos my heart desires? The race already started so I can't be DQ'ed!

Off the Grid wrote:

The official chooses which rules to enforce, and can tell the coach/parent to go get bent, and should have. Again, another apparatchik preserving a sinecure.

A lot of people are making a big leap assuming it was a parent or coach who pointed out the violation. Nowhere has this been reported that someone pointed out the violation to an official.

1. Many officials in Maryland are anal power trippers and it should not be put past them to seek out a violation of this nature and enforce it without the help of a parent or coach.

2. I was not at this meet, but at another county championship in Maryland, state officials from the same state clearly addressed all the coaches and told them that if a coach, athlete, or parent points out a rule violation, the officials would ignore the rule violation. Their job was to officiate the meet and they didn't want anyone telling them how to do their job.

So which is it? Kids who are going to have illegal uniforms thrown to them during the race or anal power tripping officials?

I repeat, tell us how you would fix the problem.

Make the uniform rules more lenient of course.

B.l.S.P. wrote:

Somewhere there's a happy medium between following rules to the degree of threatening someone's personal safety and well being and getting on a slippery slope because you "just let it slide" on violations of a rule in sport. Maybe not in the crumbling empire of the USA, but somewhere.

so there *is* discretion on the part of the official? S/he does not mindlessly enforce ALL rules....

So...its a spineless powertrip....I get it!

The role of the officials is to enforce the rules that are currently in place. If the coach did not know the rule, or did not stress it with his kids, then he or she is at fault, not the official for enforcing the existing rule.

The uniform rules are pretty standard in many sports. Also, the rules are in place because there have been violations of the rule in the past. Show up at a typical Cross Country or Track meet, and you'll see kids in different colored sweats, and different color shirts or shorts under their uniform. Would you see a basketball or football team doing the same? The rule actually helps Cross and Track teams, because it forces administrations to treat the sport like the others. I've always thought that it must drive administrators crazy when they spend a couple of grand on team sweats, and then go to a meet and kids are wearing their own stuff. Our sport shoots itself in the foot, when we want to be treated with importance like the other sports, and then insist on doing things our own way.

Having coached in high school and collegiately for many years, I've tried to have my teams know the rules and follow them, even the ones that I don't like. Teams are supposed to be dressed like teams, in other words, identical. They have very similar rules in every professional sport. Most people in our sport know the rule regarding undergarments. If you don't like it, try to get it changed. Otherwise, follow the rule.

But isn't that the question, exactly how lenient? Your anal officials can not determine this for themselves and your cheat at all cost kids will push whatever lenient rule you try.

how lenient? My personal opinion is that as long as the uniform and undergarments are not offensive then people can wear any undergarments they want. How offensive is offensive? Well officials can DQ kids for cursing or being rude so it is about as arbitrary as that rule.

You can needle me all day with what-ifs. It's a complicated problem and I won't be making any effort to change the rules, but that's my opinion and I think it is shared by most. I know that the solution is not to keep uniform rules the way they are but take away the official's power to enforce them once the race is underway.

Half of the women in the 10,000 WC in Berlin this year broke too soon and ran shorter than 10,000m.

If the officials were to enforce the objective rules that were in place they all would have been DQ'ed.

They were not DQ'ed.

This high schooler should not have been DQ'ed if any judgement were involved.

I wear spandex when it is cold out.

i just sent the officials this email. I encourage others to do the same.

Dear Edward and Becky -

I would not be surprised if you simply deleted every email that you get regarding this particular matter, however I will add one more voice to matter and hope that, in the interests of doing your job, you will actually read this email.

If you are seeing a public outcry over this on a national basis, it must be because the officials who supported the supposed uniform violation rule have put themselves in the position of taking away everything that High School sports are supposed to be about. It also has likely raised the ire of plenty of athletes who have had hopes and dreams and months of work taken away for the most arbitrary of reasons.

There are a lot of problems here with how the rule was enforced, along with the actual reading of the rule, and the proper (and smart) thing to do is address it in a public fashion as opposed to stonewalling and refusing to admit that nothing is awry. The article mentions that other runners from other schools were found not to be incompliance with the uniform rule and given the chance to change their uniforms. Why was the disqualified runner not given that chance? Why was the violation only spotted later? Why is the enforcement of this rule, especially since it had a profound effect on the race, not consistent?

Becky Oakes, assistant director of the rule creating body, defended this rule:"Your cross country uniform is supposed to say that 'I'm from high school XYZ.' Philosophically, that's what 'team' is all about. The [multicolored] Spandex undergarment began to get away from that." Becky, I'm sure that you might have good intentions, the reality is that what makes a team uniform here is the shorts and singlet, which the runner was wearing. There is no question about that, it is very very clear what team he was from. There simply is no multicolored outfit for you to get outraged about. To make comments about how white thread is taking away from the team uniform is to make yourself look ridiculous and petty. No reasonable adult would even bother to have that conversation.

And yet there it is, an arbitrarily enforced ordinance, with no practical effect other than to teach an athlete that all their hard work can be taken away a petty official for essentially no good reason.

"But a rule is a rule and we must enforce it!" I hear, which has always been the refuge of the petty official. Makes me wonder if the people who say that have ever gone even one mile over the speed limit on their way to work. Ever. Well, we have the speed limit for safety, here we have a rule should not have been enforced by reasonable adults as it resulted in no one gaining a material advantage anywhere on the race course, nor did it result in a mis-identification of the runner during the scoring, nor did it make anyone unsafe (as, say, a helmet violation might make a football player). The key here is "reasonable adults" which, sadly, the officials on the cross country course have not proven themselves to be, nor have the adults in the athletic department governing the sports in that county.

Sadly, your office will likely dig their heels in and never, NEVER admit that this was an unfortunate judgement call by an official. you may not even agree but feel duty bound to support the call. Which is sad. Because the adults are never, NEVER the losers here. The kids are. And that is why you have lost sight of what high school sports are all about, and why you should go home and look in the mirror and ask yourselves if you should bother to go to work tomorrow. High school sports are about teaching kids to work hard and stay active and healthy and bond with their peers and achieve things through hard work and teamwork that they might never have accomplished. This isn't about money or an olympic medal but about working hard and succeeding, and you've effectively scuttled that by supporting a poor call out in the field to defend the official's ego and the stature of your office.

Poor calls do get made, but instead of looking like the poster children of everything that is WRONG in American High School sports, you'd look like heroes if you said, "We're reviewing the manner in which the rule was enforced and decided that it could have been not enforced uniformly across the field and so, in this case, will let the original results stand, which changes in enforcement going forward." No loss of ego, but you'd have the respect of people across the country for your stance.

That's not the way you look right now. You look shameful.

sincerely -

Charles Yoakum

owner

Marin Running Company

San Anselmo, CA

All we're getting from you is a kneejerk reaction. You'll have to do a better job of showing how the enforcement of this rule would endanger anyone's safety. Get that?

Off the Grid wrote:

B.l.S.P. wrote:

Somewhere there's a happy medium between following rules to the degree of threatening someone's personal safety and well being and getting on a slippery slope because you "just let it slide" on violations of a rule in sport. Maybe not in the crumbling empire of the USA, but somewhere.

so there *is* discretion on the part of the official? S/he does not mindlessly enforce ALL rules....

So...its a spineless powertrip....I get it!

Completely different situations. Different rules, different sets of officials. It's a strawman argument to compare them. It's like bitching to the umpires at your kid's little league game because they don't call the game exactly like the guys working the World Series do.

X-Runner wrote:

Half of the women in the 10,000 WC in Berlin this year broke too soon and ran shorter than 10,000m.

If the officials were to enforce the objective rules that were in place they all would have been DQ'ed.

They were not DQ'ed.

This high schooler should not have been DQ'ed if any judgement were involved.

B.l.S.P. wrote:

All we're getting from you is a kneejerk reaction. You'll have to do a better job of showing how the enforcement of this rule would endanger anyone's safety. Get that?

you obviously are a pinhead who cannot see the forest for the bark.

Enforcement of rules for the rules sake is an abdication of responsibility. In the extreme (in the case of Japan), it cost a girl her life. In both cases, the responsible decision-maker hid behind the rule book engaging in destructive but ultimately ass-covering behavior.

Officials have discretion. Most of the time they exercise it wisely. In this case, they were inept in the extreme. You are nothing but an apologist for the status quo, and fail to see that INDIVIDUALS need to take resposibility for THEIR actions in the CONTEXT of others.

"Other People" - a wild idea with which you may not be familiar.

What is the purpose of a rule - to achieve a desired outcome. In the case of stitching, it is to prevent ambiguity in athlete identification.

Officials (unlike police) are judge and jury - their word is final. So they have to exercise JUDGMENT. And reasonable people ask themselves, "Is the application of this rule going to achieve the goal of the rule".

I think it is safe to say, that in the case of Hereford #4, the answer would be, "No".

There is a clinical term for people who seek to impose "rules because they are rules".

This is known as, "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder", and it requires treatment.

NE Coach wrote:

The role of the officials is to enforce the rules that are currently in place. If the coach did not know the rule, or did not stress it with his kids, then he or she is at fault, not the official for enforcing the existing rule.

gay