A great example of sportsmanship for all coaches and athletes

Well done all of you.

Good job. Unless the runner that "dove" at the line impeded the pther runner on purpose.

the dancing cougar wrote:

Good job. Unless the runner that "dove" at the line impeded the other runner on purpose.

I get your point. The way we judge the whole business depends a lot on the intention involved.

Still, the official was correct in making the call without regard to intent: all that matters (as far as the DQ is concerned) is whether the other runner was impeded. The official thought he was (as it happens, so did the runner). That meant the foul should be called.

Hell of a gesture from the Ashland team. Is this story on the front page?

the dancing cougar wrote:

Good job. Unless the runner that "dove" at the line impeded the pther runner on purpose.

Nice story. Definitely shows a lot of character and maturity.

I wonder if the one No vote came from the guy that was interfered with?

Couldn't help my sick sense of humor though, imagining the interfering runner sending a note to the team after the state meet "Suckers. I did it on purpose." Wrong to think it but there you go.

Coach Bob Julian is the brother of Pete Julian, WSU XC coach. An impressive family. The dad, Bob Sr. is a coaching legend in Oregon.

Julian and Stearns are both longtime coaches at Steens Mountain Running Camp. Mt. View had, I think, twelve team members there week one this year, and Ashland nine week two. Among the campers were both McBride and Jackson.

We couldn't be prouder of all concerned, and of the sport that fosters, and allows for such integrity.

I'm proud to call these men my friends. What a classy gesture. We'd like to think of it as a Steens sort of thing.

It's certainly a Julian kind thing, and an Ashland kind of thing. You can become legendary for your running, but there are, in fact, more powerful ways to become a legend.

This years' State Meet results will, in a few years, blur into those of other years for all but its participants, and a few coaches with great powers of memory.

But what the Ashland boys' team of 2010 did will truly immortalize them. That story will be told around Steens Mountain campfires forever.

I wonder if the one No vote came from the guy that was interfered with?

[/quote]

He had qualifed as an individual by his placing.

But he could have voted "no" to get his teammates to state with him.If there is a soul in the Oregon officials they'll let the bumped out team run state anyway.

pre841 wrote:

I wonder if the one No vote came from the guy that was interfered with?

He had qualifed as an individual by his placing.[/quote]

You know when I first heard about this I could not understand why the Mountain View team, while thanking Ashland profusely, did not turn down their gesture.

It is not the AD's or coaches or the athletes place to determine "intent" of a foul - that’s the job of the finish line judge. They were created to impartially rule on events to keep it fair. Sure they can be bullheaded and myopic at times but certainly it's a better system than letting the affected parties out gesture each other?

If the teams didn’t like the outcome they could work through the system to change the rules. If the runner was interfered with and the finish line judge's ruling is final it would seem as though Ashland had as much right to go to State as Mountain View. That being the case shouldn’t Mountain View equaled Ashland’s gesture and turned down the offer?

I certainly would have voted no and not thought twice whether it rose to the level of sportsmanship.

Right but by voting NO he would be favoring his teammates that are now staying home. Him voting yes would be kinda selfish as the vote didn't affect him as much in the sense he was already going.....Piece out, great story!

pre841 wrote:

I wonder if the one No vote came from the guy that was interfered with?

He had qualifed as an individual by his placing.[/quote]

Thank you wejo for the front page status.

I disagree. Part of the problem with the sport is the officials. Generally they are well-meaning older folks who want to give back to the sport, but the problem is that they end up finding ways to inject themselves in the events by throwing flags at anything that could be an infraction. You see this at NCAAs and USATF meets a lot -- old men in red coats with their little flags just waiting to find something wrong. The reality of racing is that there is incidental contact all of the time, and its very rare that any of it should result in disqualification.

The judges ruling was wrong and Ashland did the right thing -- in my mind, they did the only thing. Mountain View beat them fair and square.

Had it been my high school the vote would have been 7-0.

For finish line specific intereference cases, this could have been solved by a small rules modification. If the interference is deemed to be "blatant and intentional" (or some wording to the same effect) the runner could be disqualified, for less egregious interference (like it sounds like this ended up being) the placings could simply be switched. The downside is that it would bring the officials judjement into play even more (but with less drastic outcomes).

I have seen this situation before, and sometimes when the intent is not obvious, the decision is to put the offending runner behind the offended runner (in this case flipping the positions of the runners) instead of an outright DQ. The DQ is a huge consequence for what everyone seems to agree was an unintentional breaking of the rule. This decision would also create the score that would have been true without the offense. In that case, as I understand it, Mt. View is second, Ashland third, and the better team advances. As it was, a harsh consequence creates a situation where a better sits in third and an inferior team is in second.

The whole situation, of course, reminds me of the softball girls who carry the opponent around the bases for a home run because she couldn't do it herself. In both situations, the rules seemed unsportsmanlike and the players had to find the sportsman's way around them.

Rules are imperfect attempts to apply a code of fairness to the sport. Usually the insure but in other, like this one, they do not. Both teams recognized that the spirit of the rules is what matters, not the letter. What was done here made things MORE fair, not less.

Good for them.

Malmo - The officials at our meet were local citizens who gave up their Sat. to help out - This aint the Olympics, it was a 5 team HS district championship. If you weren't there to see the finish you cant really judge the judges.

Bob Julian Jr.

Ashland HS XC Coach

There's another example of runners in Oregon being mutually civil, this time in a USATF national championship race. A course marshal overtly sent the top group of runners in the 50K trail race the wrong direction for their final couple of miles. Here's the third-place runner's abbreviated account (Elinor Fish also dedicated the editor's note of the current issue of Trail Runner magazine to the matter):

"When we made it to the finish line area we saw Max King standing there waiting for us and we told him what happened. Apparently the same thing happened to him as well but he knew the area and went up the highway instead of continuing down the trail.

We all tried to be good sports about the whole situation and handle it the best way we could in the moment. We decided that Erik Skaggs was on fire all day and deserved the win. Max said that he was feeling horrible and that he didn't think he would have been able to catch him. There was no way that I (Yassine Diboun) would have caught Max... and Dave James admitted that he didn't think he would have been able to out kick me. Jeremy Tolman was a little ways behind Dave and I so there wasn't any confusion there either. We all agreed on the order and finished together."

no longer stressed wrote:

There's another example of runners in Oregon being mutually civil, this time in a USATF national championship race. A course marshal overtly sent the top group of runners in the 50K trail race the wrong direction

I think you mean "inadvertently", not "overtly" right? The latter implies it was intentional.

A heart-warming story, especially after years of reading incoherent trash talk on DyeStat.