A One Sport Only Rule
posted by Alfred Yen
A story that has stuck in my mind is the recent misfortune of a swimmer/hockey player at Latin Academy in Boston. According to the Boston Globe, the freshman athlete competed in both swimming and hocky, thereby violating a Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association rule restricting students to one sport per season. The penalty is loss of eligibility for the season and forfeiture of all games in which the athlete played. Latin Academy and the athlete appear to have suffered those penalties.
I am not ordinarily someone who thinks that penalties against athletes are too light. Star athletes get a lot of preferential treatment in our society. But this one struck me as quite a pity. The young woman in question is a freshman and had no idea she was violating a rule. Her school missed it.
According to an MIAA spokesperson, the rule exists to protect athletes from injury and to “allow adequate time for academics.” Fair enough. However, if the MIAA were really concerned about sports taking up too much time, they’d have rules about how many hours a week students can spend in practice for a single sport. Or, perhaps Massachusetts should have a limit on time spent for ANY extracurricular school related activity. They presumably don’t stop children from playing in both the school musical and a sports team, and the hours spent could be comparable. And, of course, if the student had been a figure skater, she could easily have spent more hours doing that while playing hockey. Indeed, if she competes for a swim club, she would spend the same amount of time training even though she didn’t swim for her school team.
The partial disconnect between the rule and its stated purpose makes me wonder if there aren’t other reasons for the rule that better justify it. For example, the limitation of one sport per season preserves roster spots for other students to participate.
In the end, I don’t know if I really think the outcome here was a gross miscarriage of justice, but I do think the young woman and her school suffered a pretty harsh penalty for violating a rule that seems not to serve its stated purpose too well. Quick perusal of the MIAA rules indicates that the suffered penalties are roughly the same (ineligibility and forfeiture of games) as if she had taken money to compete. Anyway, it seems to me that rethinking of this rule and/or its penalties is warranted.
March 8, 2007 at 8:42 am
Posted in: Culture, Education
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Responses (4)
jim - March 8, 2007 at 10:52 am
It sounds like you never played sports in high school.
Bruce Boyden - March 8, 2007 at 11:36 am
Jim, I played sports in high school, and I don’t get your comment.
johnshade - March 8, 2007 at 1:33 pm
“I am not ordinarily someone who thinks that penalties against athletes are too light.” Did you mean “too harsh”?
Alfred Yen - March 8, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Hmmmmm…..I think that johnshade is right. I usually think that athletes get treated too leniently when they break rules.
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