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

that is incorrect - the guard DID know the girl was coming. He saw her....and he hit he button, because it was his job.

Ryoko Ishida, Kobe, 1990, 15yrs old...first day of school....asswipe....

This is an interesting debate and relates to interesting jurisprudential questions about the nature of laws and the role and obligations of law enforcers.

I've read the whole thread and it seems like there are the following viewpoints:

(1) The rule is a good one and the offical was correct to enforce it. Anyone who alerted the official to the rule has no blame. The coach is to blame for not ensuring compliance.

(2) The rule is not a good one (because petty, doesn't aid fair competition or safety) but because it is on the rulebook the official, once aware of the breach had no alternative but to enforce the rule. Officials should not exercise discretion because that could lead to subjectivity and arbitrariness.. Parents who may have alerted the official to the rule have some blame, as does coach.

(3) The rule is not a good one (above reasons) and the official should have recognised its not a good rule and despite being aware of the breach used a discretion not to enforce it, in the wider interests of fairplay and the essence of the sport.

I run competitively and am a lawyer with an interest in philosophy of law. I have to admit I agree with (3). Essentially I credit humans and officials with enough wit and common sense to apply (or disapply) rules with common sense.

I have a certain limited sympathy with (2). Ideally the people who enforce rules should be different from those who make them. Ideally rules should be followed or revoked. Ideally the application of rules should not be an arbitrary choice of an official.

However, here common sense and fairness should trump (2) and prevail.

I have very little sympathy with (1). (I guess this is because I am a libertarian and generally wish for a society with fewer rules). The person who argued that the sport would be better offand taken more seriously with rules like big successful sports made an ingenious argument however.

The jews / gold star analogy and the crushed Japanese student argument are both relevant and interesting. (When did people become so scared of analogies?!) The star or david is an example of a bad rule that shouldn't be enforced because it is bad. The schoolgate example is an example of a non-bad rule that should be applied with discretion. Don't close huge metal gates when a child is running at them. It's sort of obvious.

I've lived in Japan and seen those gates.

In Britain the rules in XC is that singlets have to match. Doesn't matter if shorts/socks are different.

P.s sorry for missing a couple of apostrophes and commas!

I forgot to write that I think that the people who said this rule should be enforced up until the race starts have suggested a good practical solution.

I remember this sort of debate that took place after WC w10000 in Belin, won by Masai. No cones unlike customary position. Outer lane women cut in early thereby running a shorter distance. Officials don't call for a re-start. Result of race not materially changed. A tonne of people on Letsrun bitch on here that there should have been DQs.

My view was that the cones should have been placed as they were in the men's race. (Rules should be easy to follow!) The race should have been re-started. Given that it wasn't restarted, the result should have stood. (A good example of officals disapplying a breach of a rule using common sense.)

In Britian in January there was a debate about this when Newham and Essex Beagles when Sam Farah of Newham and Essex Beagles was disqualified after wearing the wrong singlet in the Southern Counties XC champs. I would describe all the details, but time to go and eat.

Face it, there are too many stupid rules in high school xc/track. Officials have to simply ignore them. There is also a rule that says there can only be one logo per piece of clothing, so the Under Armour tops and those Nike Pro shorts are in violation. Yeah, right, it's because those high school kids make so much money endorsing those products.

There is the quintessentially "Americun" viewpoint, which you are too polite to mention, which states that, "All rules must be obeyed"

Your statement #1 implies that the official/judge believes the rule to be useful/good. That is not part of the thinking - in the US, there exists a non-trivial % of the population that believes ALL rules, no matter how inane, should be enforced.

"Ignorance of the law is no excuse" is often heard in the US.

I have lived outside the US for 17yrs, and have never really encountered this mentality anywhere else, except....Japan...

And yes those gates are GD huge. Here in Taiwan (as a result of this event I believe), they cannot be automatically closed all the way. A space between the wall and the end of the gate is built, w/ a metal accordion door attached, so the guard has to then manually pull it closed.

Wait a second, I thought the quintessential American point of view started with the saying "No Taxation without representation." America is all about protesting what isn't right. That is why so many of us are responding to this ridiculous issue. Who cares if the black spandex has white stiching? Hereford won the championship.

In Illinois high school cross country and track & field, uniforms are checked when runners report. If there is an infraction, the runner is told to change. If an infraction is is not caught at that time it is overlooked at the finish line. There is a great tradition of making exemptions to the uniform rule. One example is when the weather is really bad I have seen officials allow extra clothing -- that would normally not be legal -- to keep athletes warm. When this rule is strictly enforced, officials just get themselves in trouble. This was the case with the different colored bras on high school girl relay teams a few years ago. That is an undergarment. Officials now no longer looked for that because they realized that was stupid. This case is stupid too and makes all the adults involved look ridiculous.

Calripken wrote:

America is all about protesting what isn't right.

WRONG, used to be.

I suppose in addition to not believing in the rule of law, you do believe in vigilante 'justice' and lynch mobs. You act like rules and laws can't be changed if there is enough interest to do so.

White is not a colour.

If the stitching was white then it was a different SHADE not a different COLOUR. If you want to follow the rules to the letter ...

B.l.S.P. wrote:

rule of law,

...rule of law??? this is a childrens' overland footrace, you neurotic pedant...

Here in the US, colour is a misspelling of color. Thanks for the outsider's perspective, all the same!

Off the Grid wrote:

B.l.S.P. wrote:

rule of law,

...rule of law??? this is a childrens' overland footrace, you neurotic pedant...

Sorry to go all philosophical and lose you, impotent simpleton. Come on, melodramatically whine about this gross miscarriage of justice some more, because it'll make all the difference in the world and will not only change this outcome but will ensure that it never happens again.

Or something like that.

P.S. "children" is plural, so the apostrophe goes before the s.

Off the Grid wrote:

I have lived outside the US for 17yrs

Please keep adding to that total!

as long as windbags cling mercilessly to rules, regardless of what common sense tells a person who happens to lie w/in 2-3 standard deviations of the mean, then cock-ups such as this will continue to occur.

....at the high school level where it really doesn't matter.

Because that's the only place you will find these class of officials.

Alpha Mike Foxtrot....

Off the Grid has raised the point that some people think that a law or rule, by the very virtue of it being a law or rule, has inherent validity or goodness! Certainly some of the posters on this thread seem to be close to this viewpoint. I agree, this sort of viewpoint might be seen more on this thread just because there are likely to be mor coaches and officials posting.

In Britain nobody thinks laws are good per se. We just don't trust law makers that much.

Hilarious that BISP thinks that Off the Grid has somehow suggested that s/he doesn't believe in the rule of law! It's important to understand that all societies have a hierarchy of rules, from criminal and constitutional laws to the more minor administrative regulations to the very trivial. Let's be realistic about where this regulation fits into the scheme.

No problem. My family & I have no intention of ever residing in the US. Far better options available elsewhere...

Off the Grid wrote:

I have lived outside the US for 17yrs

Lee Greenwood wrote:

Please keep adding to that total!

As an Australian I can say that there is one good thing about the Brits ... they spell colour the right way. You can't just get rid of U's as you see fit America.

Interesting conversation - I'm a high school coach in Minnesota and situations like this have come up multiple times over the past seven years that I have been around. I want to say that the state champ girls 4x8 was DQ'ed last year for wearing different color spandex under their uniform.

As a clarification - the reasoning behind the rule has nothing to do with identification of athletes. The philosophy of the National Federation of HS Sports is that no high school athlete should draw attention to themselves as an individual for any other reason than their performance. So, no additions to the school-issued uniform that might be distinctive in any way. I'm not sure, but I believe that HS federations make the specific regulations (for example, the visible stitching was the subject of a rule change in MN last year) and of course, enforcement.

These situations are crap, and these rules need to be changed - but at the same time no well-coached team should be at a competition and not understand the rule. Officials will always be cranky old guys with the wrong priorities - the rules around electronic devices is going to be the next wave of stupid disqualifications - coaches need to look out for their athletes.