I feel for the kid, because as others have mentioned 1) being on a sports team in high school goes a long way in college admissions, and 2) I feel like anyone who’s putting in the hard work and shows up to practice, regardless of ability, should get the chance to at least be on the team and practice (but not start/play in games). Then again, a basketball team is limited to about 10-15 guys (unlike, say, football, which can comfortably carry 60-80 players). It also seems like there’s no JV team, which would be the fallback option.
That all said, I don’t see how a lawsuit holds water here. Even if we assume that physical education is a guaranteed right, that’s met by letting the kid take PE classes during school hours.
It just occurred to me that when Mom was talking about scholarship opportunities, she didn’t think that he would make it on a college level team. She meant that being on a high school team would be one of his extra-curriculars that would help him get a regular scholarship.
I wouldn’t take a job with a company like that. I’d rather work for a company that feels it owes me some loyalty in exchange for me doing the job they hired me for. And because I’m a good employee I can afford to be choosy and turn down a company like you described. I think the only people that would work for a company like that are complete losers who can’t get any better offers or complete bastards who don’t expect any loyalty because they don’t plan on giving any loyalty.
What do you expect from your employer? That he can just call you into the office one morning and say “Hey, you’ve done a good job for the last ten years and I have no complaints. But I feel like firing you today. I guess you just wasted the last decade of your life working here, huh? Sucks to be you. Good bye.”
If your workplace is like that, you have my sympathy.
This describes pretty much every company of any significant size in this country. If you work for a company that doesn’t do this, good for you, but I’ve never heard of one.
IBM is doing it right now, in fact. In fact, pretty much every technology company will.
The excuse might be cost cutting or efficiency, but it happens all the time.
“Office Space”, while a work of fiction, is a decent satire of the phenomenon.
I can only imagine the ration of $#!* the guy will take from the other teammates if he’s placed on the team due to his mother’s efforts. Thinking back to that time in my life, I’m pretty sure I’d rather have bitten a sleeping bear in the ass than have my mother argue my way onto a team.
No, in HS when you are participating in one sport you are not permitted by your current coach to participate in any other sports until that coach releases you. You can organize a tryout, but if you aren’t done with one season you can’t try out for the next season until your coach says so. This isn’t uncommon at all.
Unless there is a major fall sport that keeps HS girls from trying out for the basketball team in significant numbers I don’t see where this is a problem. Iif there isn’t the major overlap between female student athletes like there is for Football/Basketball then it wouldn’t prohibit anyone from competing based on gender.
As an aside. I was having lunch with someone who mentioned that out of the jocks in her high school, the most successful one is now a physical therapist. She made about 20 times as much as a physical therapist last year
The average physical therapist makes about $75k a year in the United States. If your friend is making $1.5 million a year she’s far more successful than most everyone else she went to high school with.
