Be forwrned this is silly/dumb/meaningless (pick opwn adj.)
The MIAA (governing body of MA HS sports) has two rules that don’t make total sense.
1.Students can’t compete in 2 sports per season. I object because there’s plenty of time during the season to do 2 (ond only 2) sports.
2.Track runners must wear shoes (to be fair this is national policy). But Why? It’s not like it will be HORRIBLY dangerous to be accidentally kicked.
Uh, eric, honey, the second word in high school athletes is “school”. They are there to get an education, not just to compete in sports. Just because you find the classwork to be easy enough to manage two sports doesn’t mean that others do. So I’m sure the one-sport rule is to ensure that students have sufficient time for classes, homework, and studying.
The second rule is just as obvious. If you’re running barefoot and you get stepped on by someone wearing track shoes (which are spiked, after all), you can get hurt very badly. Let’s say you get your heel stepped on by a runner with shoes. Your achilles tendon can be injured quite badly, and this isn’t an easy problem to fix. Do a Google search on Mary Decker Slaney and Zola Budd if you don’t believe me.
Robin
Because if they were allowed to make their own decisions, it would mean they were thinking for themselves.
And we can’t have that, now can we?
No sir, independant thought is a no-no.
To clarify, Mary Decker did not hurt her achilles tendon. It was just an example of one person running barefoot and the other running with shoes.
Robin
eric, have you ever run a significant amount of time on a track without wearing shoes? Unless they make them out of gel these days (insteda of the rubber they used when I was in HS), a track is not something you want to be running on barefoot (especially in the summer). Add to that possible injury as MsRobyn has pointed out.
Regarding the one sport per season rule … think about the time committment. Also think about the fact that they are there to learn, not to play sports.
I understnad the SCHOOL part! I’m just ranting! for no good reason BTW. (I’m also in a wheelchair, so sadly, I don’t run)
Yeah, I am sure that is it. There are no rules in professional sports.
eric, it isn’t just high school. No one is allowed to make their own decisions 100% of the time with out taking into account the rules of their particular situation.
If you want to play high school sports you have to follow the rules of high school sports. If you go on to play college sports some of the rules will change but there will still be rules. Ditto professional sports. It isn’t about making your own decisions.
Maybe the 2-sports-only rule keeps the same jocks from hogging all the limelight.
Where does this “1 sport only” rule apply? I can remember back in high school numerous kids taking part in 2 or 3 sports. Many guys played football, track, and baseball and girls played field hockey, softball, and volleyball.
For the details: public school in Pennsylvania during the early 1990s.
I think that the OP was talking about one sport per season. When I was in high school a lot of students played more then one sport, but they could only play one at a time.
Yep. “Whoevver has the gold makes the rules.”
If you’re a talented, incredibly popular pro athlete, you can get away with practically anything up to and including first degree murder.
Not that this has a thing to do with the topic at hand.
I gotta call bs on people saying the 1 sport rule is in place for education purposes. GPA requirements already make sure atheletes don’t neglect their studies. If they can maintain a decent GPA, why should anyone care if they are in 2 sports, or 3 or more? If they can handle school and all the sports they want, let 'em!
2.Track runners must wear shoes (to be fair this is national policy). But Why?
It’s called mitigation, which means trying to prevent lawsuits.
Kid falls down barefoot, gets hurt, parents sue for millions because the school didn’t have a policy that track runners must have shoes on.
Dude. How would you play two sports in one season anyway? All the sports I played required you to be at practice every day for three hours after school; when would you go to practice for the other sport?
Any idea the time committment this would take? In addition to the idea that a good/great athlete in one sport would be allowed by the coach/school to tackle another sport and risk injury?
Maybe it’s not the time - in fact, I don’t think it is, otherwise the rule would be about a number of extra-curricular activities, not just sports.
It might just be about the games and practices conflicting with each other, and the difficulty of taking two (or more) sports and making sure that there are no conflicting games for any school.
My son doesn’t play for school teams yet- at his age, it’s independent leagues. One year his in-house roller hockey team had a fairly large number of kids who were also playing on a traveling ice hockey team. I’m sure the in-house officials did the best they could in coordinating the schedules, but it wasn’t done perfectly. Every couple of weeks the two games conflicted with each other, and the roller hockey team was short players- if another kid or two couldn’t make the game for some reason, they had to forfeit.
Re: time, I don’t know if it’s just the school I attended, but all practices were held at the same time. And teams frequently had games at the same time, and often at different schools. So unless one was able to bilocate…
Wow. Teenagers can do that?!
I find plenty of time during the week to jump rope, channel surf, and play darts, yet with this one-sport-semester rule, I can’t do all three!
I guess I’ll just have to channel surf.