Bureaucrats Strike Again: 1st Ever Maryland Meet of Champions Meet Cancelled Just Weeks Before It Was To Be Held

LetsRun.com wrote:

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2018/12/bureaucrats-strike-again-1st-ever-maryland-meet-of-champions-meet-cancelled-just-weeks-before-it-was-to-be-held/

High school sports are for the bureaucrats who run them, not the kids . The reason that Nike can buck the system and not the volunteer assistant coach at Centennial High is that Nike has the bucks to take the bureaucracy to court and have it thrown out but Graff doesn’t .

From my experience bureaucrats suffer from the "Not Invented Here" syndrome. If someone else comes up with an idea it can't be any good otherwise we would have thought of it first. Graff's only real chance to get his idea to fly was to cozy up to a senior bureaucrat in the MPSSAA, vaguely talk about the idea, let the bureaucrat expand on it a bit, then congratulate the bureaucrat for coming up with such a good idea.

Those athletes look very fit. Great job to the coach/coaches.

Did you read the article? The guy "partnered" with Under Armor. Literally the only reason the meet wasn't okay was that invitees were going to be selected based on regular season performances. If they had simply allowed any high school age runners from Maryland to enter they would have been fine and not violated any rules. It seems like the people at the state athletic association went out of their way to protect the kids eligibility by telling everyone what rule it was breaking before the meet happened.

The anti-bureaucrat slant on this article is moronic, although I am not surprised since it's letsrun.

Someone who can actually read wrote:

If they had simply allowed any high school age runners from Maryland to enter they would have been fine and not violated any rules.

So... instead of a 'Meet of Champions', you'd prefer a 'Everyone can participate' Meet...

No, don't be silly. You simply let anyone enter then seed heats/races to group performances.

Someone who can actually read wrote:

The anti-bureaucrat slant on this article is moronic, although I am not surprised since it's letsrun.

I'm glad the organizer isn't being as moronic as letsrun. He clearly should have asked the state athletic association before organizing the event what rules would have to be followed to not risk the eligibility of the runners.

Chris Graff was tired of the fact that top runners in Maryland never got the chance to race each other in state

First World Problems

Sad to see Gault being brainwashed by the Brojos and their right wing stances.

The fact is MD had a rule. It wasn’t new, it wasn’t targeted at XC, it had a sound rationale for the rule. But Gault sees this as some affront

Why did the “coach” got to Under Armor first instead of going to the high school association? Is he a full bliwn moron? That makes no sense. You should make sure it clears the rules first.

Then he gets angry

Yer smart, yup. wrote:

No, don't be silly. You simply let anyone enter then seed heats/races to group performances.

Oh great - I really wanted to watch 12 heats of crap runners before the real talent shows up

Yer smart, yup. wrote:

No, don't be silly. You simply let anyone enter then seed heats/races to group performances.

Yeah, this should be an easy fix. They should should expand the meet to all comers and two-days but seed appropriately.

On day 1, any Joe Schmoe can enter by paying an entry fee. On day 2, the best run on this day with entry fee waived.

Someone who can actually read wrote:

Did you read the article? The guy "partnered" with Under Armor. Literally the only reason the meet wasn't okay was that invitees were going to be selected based on regular season performances. If they had simply allowed any high school age runners from Maryland to enter they would have been fine and not violated any rules. It seems like the people at the state athletic association went out of their way to protect the kids eligibility by telling everyone what rule it was breaking before the meet happened.

The anti-bureaucrat slant on this article is moronic, although I am not surprised since it's letsrun.

No, the anti-bureaucrat slant isn't moronic. Footlocker and Nike regionals have a way of diluting the field because small schools, slow schools, people with no business being there won't travel all the way to regionals unless they live close. Maryland is kind of unique in that all the population is around DC and Baltimore, so to make it an open meet, you open the flood gates to way too many athletes, more than the event could facilitate before it gets rolling and is hosted for a couple years. Only slow schools in western Maryland wouldn't be going.

The rule about "all star meets" is moronic. There is nothing inherently all stary about a meet that hurts a kid in any way, its just one more race and a lot of top schools would only run their b athletes anyways.

People on this site would be aruging there was something inherently wrong with tomatoes if Maryland made a rule that anyone who ate tomatoes would forfeit high school sports eligibility.

Someone who can actually read wrote:

Did you read the article? The guy "partnered" with Under Armor. Literally the only reason the meet wasn't okay was that invitees were going to be selected based on regular season performances. If they had simply allowed any high school age runners from Maryland to enter they would have been fine and not violated any rules. It seems like the people at the state athletic association went out of their way to protect the kids eligibility by telling everyone what rule it was breaking before the meet happened.

The anti-bureaucrat slant on this article is moronic, although I am not surprised since it's letsrun.

DUh. Yes the athletic association went out of their way to protect the kids from the athletic association. Bottom line, it is about the retired ADs who run the association keeping the gravy train to themselves .

Damn you, Mary Wittenberg!!!

Bfhgjfujbj wrote:

Sad to see Gault being brainwashed by the Brojos and their right wing stances.

The fact is MD had a rule. It wasn’t new, it wasn’t targeted at XC, it had a sound rationale for the rule. But Gault sees this as some affront

Why did the “coach” go to Under Armor first instead of going to the high school association? Is he a full blown moron? That makes no sense. You should make sure it clears the rules first.

Then he gets angry

Agreed. He could have saved himself a lot of embarrassment by just reading the MPSSAA By-Laws before he started down this path, and then contacting the MPSSAA if he was uncertain if it applied to his event. In Colorado all coaches, even volunteer assistants, have to take a test on the state By-Laws, it's part of being a high school coach (unfortunately). This seems more like he was trying to fly under the radar and then got upset when he got shut down.

Most states have a couple of big invitationals during the regular season that usually get the best teams and individuals together. If these top teams and runners in Maryland aren't racing each other during the regular season, it's because their coaches don't want to, Maryland just ain't that big. As a competitive runner himself does he really think it's a good idea to add another meet at the end of the season for these national caliber runners? So they are somehow supposed to peak for state, champions, regionals and nationals? Or I guess it's OK to just race these poor kids into the ground so a few fans can get their head to head competition?

I have been a coach in Md for almost 3 decades these rules have always been there. I think like a lot of stated these guys just jumped the gun.

There have been many attempts at a Maryland meet of champions both in xc and track. Everyone who tries thinks they are going to outsmart the athletic association, but with them having the ability to make underclassmen ineligible it just won't happen. No coach in their right mind would put a kid at risk.

For it to work it has to be open, no invitations. Just make elite sections. You'll never get everyone to do it, but some would. Also for xc it is alot to do all of those championship meets in consecutive weeks.

Michigan High School Athletic Association has always attempted to prevent such event participation including NB Track Champs two years ago. Same thing, tried to say those going would be in eligible next season for XC and TF. Fell on deaf ears of the coaching community. Plans for class action suit by coaches and parents against MHSAA prevented the bureaucrats from taking action. Should have just run it.

Maryland and Virginia had a "Border War" that same weekend from 2006 to 2016. This exact same scenario happened in 2006 when the Border War organizers tried to invite athletes and waive entry fees. The MPSSAA threatened eligibility, but the Border War organizers didn't quit. They opened the meet to everyone and charged everyone equally. It never became a really prestigious draw for the top talent that had national aspirations, but it was fun.

I guess Graff is so new that he did not know about that meet. OR he thought, "let's take the Border War, exclude Virginians, and THAT will be groundbreaking!"

I love the point that someone made about the kids not meeting until Footlocker Regionals in New York. There are about 8 weeks of invitationals to make it happen. You mean that these kids' coaches could not have arranged a meeting during the season? Of course they could have. It's not that important to anyone involved.

Ask people from a state with a Meet Of Champions ....like NJ.....and they will tell you how important the meet is and how much they like that format. There should only be one champion per state.....it isn't "an extra meet", it is the most important intra-state meet of the year. Saying that it isn't that important to anyone involved is just ignorance. Saying that you wouldn't run another meet because you are worried about running the kids into the ground is silly. Saying that there are other invites when the top kids can run against each other is missing the point. In a state with a MOC, EVERY top kid from the state runs against all the others. That would never be duplicated in a mid-season invite.