DDFF wrote:
flyover wrote:Great lesson he/she taught the athletes - if you can't be 'em in a race, find ways to get them disqualified.
That is the only reason he did this. Any other excuse is BS.
This had nothing to do with the race, strategy or his team.
He did it only for himself. I'm sure he must have his chest puffed out reveling in HIS victory.
I do not question why the coach pointed out this infraction. A coach's job is to do whatever they can to ensure that their team places as high as possible. As long as the coach stays within the rules, we should expect nothing less from coaches.
Pointing out possible infractions made by other teams, and working the officials is generally an acceptable strategy that is used by coaches at all levels. Coaches do this all the time in other high school sports. The officials in those sports have learned to deal with it, and they have the ability to penalize the coach (and the team of the coach) if the coach goes too far (technical fouls, penalties, ejection). I doubt that HS XC officials have this recourse and I doubt such rules exist in XC running, but they need to be added.
I have personally been on all sides of the sport (athlete, coach and official) and this situation played out as it should.
The Alamosa coach pointed out to an official that the Salida uniforms did not match. He obviously did this as an attempt to improve his team's chances of winning, and we should expect nothing less from any coach. Some may question whether his actions were ethically correct, but he was within his rights as a coach to do so. At least he did it before the race, and not during or after as a protest.
The official made a judgment that the uniforms did not match, after being made aware of this by the coach. He made a decision based on his knowledge of the rules. We can't blame the official for this, as he was only acting to interpret the rules. The officials could have let the race be run and then disqualified the athletes afterwards, but that would have been worse. The officials at least delayed the start of the race slightly to give the Salida team an opportunity to correct the situation, which they did to the best of their ability.
Were officials acting improperly by not applying the rule consistently for all teams? Perhaps, but officials make judgment calls all the time and they also miss calls. No one brought the fact that other team uniforms did not match to the officials attention.
Were the Salida runners upset by the situation so they did not run their best? Perhaps, but it appears as though their top 5 runners did get to eventually run. They may have been distracted by this but overcoming adversity in all its forms is something that you need to learn to do to perform at your best as an athlete. Everyone still ran the race and as things shook out in the actual competition their team barely lost by 4 points and finished second overall.
The Salida Coach was man enough to step forward and state that this was fully his fault. That was huge and proper. Coaches make mistakes all the time and this was one of those.
Is it fair that all this happened? Life itself is not fair, and sports are not either.
Maybe they need to review the rules to clarify things so this does not happen again.