Rocky mountain’s top 2 runners DQ’d at districts for holding hands across the finish line

In that case, the other team is walking off the court, and forfeiting any chance of winning. In this case, the runners behind them are still giving everything they have. So yes, watch an NBA game, and if the other team is still trying hard, the refs will call make those calls, even if it is a 20 point lead with 30 seconds to go. Size of the lead and the inevitability of the outcome doesn't matter. And in this case, the other runners were still competing at max effort. So, using your NBA example, they should have been DQ'ed. Good point.

Basketball referees make arbitrary judgements all the time, on nearly every play. There is contact all the time, but it doesn’t rise to the level of a foul unless the referee decides it does, and the level changes depending on what the referee sees or how he interprets it.

You really use bad examples. In the cases you are citing, they are still calling the plays by the rule book, and basketball is a game of continuous subjective calls. This rule mentions a specific act "holding hands" as cause for DQ. This rule and its consequences comes up enough so that it really needs to have the wording revised to make it absolutely clear that it is allowed if that is the intention, and when it is allowed. Trying to debate if the intent of the rule is to allow the referee to take intent into account is silly when it could be addressed directly so easily with different wording. And it will happen again many times, so just fix it.

You can make anyone's life hell by strictly enforcing all existing laws, rules, codes, etc upon them. Life is only functionable because people usually have the common sense to overlook and even undermine the petty rules.

Excessive appeals to the letter of the law suggests an early stage of moral development according to Kohlberg. This level of development is appropriate for children aged 8-13. By adulthood, one should understand that morality and ethicality transcend written laws. The final stages of moral development are based on social contract and principle of the law. Any reasonable person can clearly see that the athletes gained no advantage nor hindered their competitors by holding hands-- therefore, they did not violate any social contract or basic principles of track and field.

Those who call for unconditional DQ in this case have the moral development of pre-teens. Us adults can see that there is no moral or ethical standing to disqualify these athletes.

There's a lot of conjecture on here about them being clearly in the lead, including on the front page. The number 3 runner was less than a second back from them and has run 9:13 this season, so he's legit. Granted, all three were clearly running very easily and coasting into the finish, but joining hands could be construed as impeding the third place runner. The third place runner beat Heemeyer in the 1600 the following day. Rocky Mountain runners will get on here and claim that their guys were just running easy or just qualifying, but Heemeyer was clearly pushing the last 200m and finished 4th to two big kickers and the third place runner, who is a similar profile to Heemeyer. Sainsbury was further back but pretty clearly just qualifying so he could come back strong in the 800.

State should be pretty fun. Rocky Mountain boys will probably need to push the pace in the 1600 so that Heemeyer won't finish in 4th, but not too much so that Sainsbury isn't gassed for the 800 about an hour later. The 3200 will be interesting as Sainsbury will be going for the triple crown, but with all of the comments about Landon's dad having cancer and the team rallying around him, I suspect that even if he is in a position to win the 3200, he'll let Landon win. Cervi-Skinner, Ringert, and Lucas are all close enough that they will still need to probably run 9:05 to make sure that they go 1-2. Lucas did look like he struggled last week in the 3200 and then was dropped by 3 seconds in the last 400 meters of the 1600.

I'm not saying that they actually impeded the third place runner, but that could also have been a factor in an overzealous official flagging them.

The district meet is always a mixed bag. Relax on nitpicking the Rocky group, they seemed to execute a good couple days (they even snuck some hand-holding in there). Top 10 was the name of the game at Districts.

I never ran a high school race where a teammate was within shouting distance, much less able to hold hands.
My son had a teammate close to him, in fact they were the top duo in the state that year. They were very close friends, but there is no way they would ever think of holding hands to finish a race. That just seems boastful and I think it is poor sportsmanship to hold hands.
In a different thread, people were agreeing about DQing athletes for taunting at the finish line. Holding hands is kind of an elitist form of taunting.

It seems like this is a debate between black or white thinkers vs. shades of gray. So, it boils down to whether a rule book and subsequent enforcement should be black or white or shades of gray. There are clear advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. Perhaps it could be as simple as an official making the trackside judgment in strict adherence to the rulebook, but then appeals being handled on a case by case shades of gray scale by committee.

even if holding hands count as aid, you need to take context into consideration. do the runners have any benefit of doubt about whether or not they received aid? if they saw them holding hands in a fashion that didn't affect the outcome of the race, then it shouldn't be a DQ. if they were holding hands but was neck and neck with another runner which could potentially have caused that other runner to come in 3rd, then fine, dq.

The third place runner was less than a second back.

All of the boys that got pushed out of the state meet by the reinstatements have been added back to the 3200 field. There are now 19 runners instead of 16 like every other race.

I think this is yet another thing that shows that the way that these boys were added back in and if it was done correctly is questionable.

That or the folks running things with Idaho HS track right now are probably nice folks but they struggle to do what makes sense in tough new situations the first time around.

Have a little grace for the officials. If they knew what kind of firestorm would happen from simply making a call, they wouldn't have messed with it. You have to remember that most of these guys are older gentlemen who simply like the sport and are trying to make a little side cash.

The meet officials aren’t the ones who added them back in. That’s a separate games committee that did that. The games committee wouldn’t be adding kids to the field if they weren’t trying to make the problem go away. They were firm that these kids were bounced from the meet up until people started threatening lawyers and then they suddenly had flexibility.

Imagine threatening lawyers over a high school track meet.

So exactly what the Rocky Mountain parents were doing?