Quote:
Originally posted by Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.
I have officiated close to 200 hundred games with CT basketball officials and I have never had one do this. I just don't know where WinterWillie is coming from.
MTD, Sr.
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You obviously do not officiate games in my state. Each year, every basketball official in the state is required to attend mandatory interpretation meetings (with severe penalties for non attendance) where all rules the state association
instituted are discussed. The IAABO state interpreter (who also happens to be the local interpreter for my board) is the person who goes over these rules. The CAS/CIAC has been known to impose very stringent restrictions upon the public schools with in the state. The most recent controversy with the CAS/CIAC happened this weekend when three HS girls (varsity basketball players) attended an alumni game at a local HS and because of a shortage of players, were asked to participate by one of their coaches. The CAS/CIAC has declared these three HS ineligible and banned them from competiton for the rest of the basketball season. (Read the following article which was in todays newspaper)
CIAC lacks compassion
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
MILLS COLUMN
It is a clear-cut violation. They broke the rules. Ignorance is no defense.
Three basketball players from Lewis Mills High School, a junior and two sophomores, have been told to hand in their uniforms. They played for a matter of minutes in an alumni basketball game. Not enough alums showed up so a few athletes came out of the stands to help. They took a couple of turns around the floor. They never broke a sweat. They gave a couple of geezers a rest. That is the sum total of their violation.
But then the bureaucrats in the fancy suits and the plush offices decided this behavior to be so heinous that these three players have been banned from playing basketball for their high school team for the rest of the season. Think about that. This is only a game. It is an extracurricular activity designed to augment a teenager's educational experience. But these players, so it is judged, no longer merit that experience. All the wonderful things we associate with playing a simple game is now denied to them.
If the story wasn't so tragic it would almost make you laugh.
The lords of high school sports, the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference are just doing their
job. But I wonder, are they doing their job well? We've beaten them up in the past over similar issues. It is a pointless exercise, really, but we do it because we hope that someday they'll realize that they love their rules too much, that the worship of legal jargon has blinded them to justice.
To be fair, this eligibility rule grew out of need. Once upon a time young athletes, who understood only the love of a game, were pawns in the hands of powerful men. Young men played games on weekends for club teams, and they played under assumed names. The athletes were simply in pursuit of another chance to play a game. Dishonest men and crooked coaches used the innocent to earn glory.
Eligibility rules are a necessary part of the scholastic sports equation. Every team deserves a fair and equal opportunity to achieve success. That's why the CIAC established rules for when you can start training, when you can play and, most importantly it seems, when you cannot play.
If you hang out around high school sports long enough, you begin to understand clearly that there is no such thing as fair and equal in this world. There are high school baseball teams that go south for a week of spring training. There are swim teams that train in warmer climates over the holidays. Wrestling teams, cross country teams, softball teams, you name the sport, there are schools that benefit from a huge competitive advantage because they aggressively raise funds to attend camps, or buy better equipment, or higher more coaches.
And yet the best the CIAC can do to level the proverbial playing field is banish three kids for three months. Does anyone believe that those few minutes of court time will give these players a competitive advantage over the rest of the Berkshire League?
Basketball players dream about pick-up games the way oil barons dream about gushers. A pick-up game played in a schoolyard does not violate CIAC rules. But donating your time to a charity event, or in this case, just being a good kid who wanted to help, carries with it a death penalty.
Here's the awful truth about this so-called violation: If the scoreboard hadn't been turned on, if no one kept a score book, the game wouldn't have been "official." If it isn't official, rules were not broken.
But instead, they've branded three players as cheaters. Professional athletes take illegal substances, college athletes who don't have jobs drive around in fancy sports cars, and yet a couple of kids from Lewis Mills are banned for the season. How dumb is that?
The decision will be appealed. On occasion the CIAC has changed a ruling. There seems little chance that this will be one of those occasions. As we said at the top, a rule was broken. We can only hope that someday our beloved rules will be administered with compassion.
Joe Palladino is a Republican-American staff writer. He can be e-mailed at
[email protected]
The lords of HS sports, the CIAC, don't tell me what they can
and cannot do.