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