AR mother sues constitutional violation after son cut from varsity team

Lokiate said:

I disagree. I think sports are great for encouraging, and teaching a healthy active lifestyle, teamwork, and sportsmanship. Should the high emphasis some schools place on athletics be drastically reduced? Absolutely, but not cut.

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That's not what schools are for. So let other organizations such as churches, Little Leagues, etc., take over these activities. Interested students should do it in their own time on their own dime. If the public wants a bunch of socially popular students instead of educated workers, then they are to blame for this misplaced inclusion of the irrelevant. The most abuses are found in activities that shouldn't be funded at all, so the usual evasion of just eliminating abuses is insufficient for reforming education.

PrometheusBound said:

They should be totally separated from the schools, just like the Little League is. College sports should be replaced by minor leagues. This whole association of learning with extracurriculars is an insult to intelligence.

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Extracurricular activities are indeed beneficial, and add to a person's overall development and education. And at one time they used to be that way. Now, they have evolved to being big business unto themselves, to the point that they often dictate the direction of the school, so the intended benefit has been pretty much completely lost.

Morality Games said:

Is anyone actually reading the article? The real issue here seems to be that football players were given precedence for arbitrary reasons, non-meritocratic in nature. The argument about constitutional violations is a weird way of approaching the issue, as it should be handled at a more local level, but there appears to be some kind of wrongdoing.

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I'm surprised so few latched onto this point. I don't support the lawsuit, but the school's method of determining the roster is no less crappy and unfair.

PrometheusBound said:

That's not what schools are for. So let other organizations such as churches, Little Leagues, etc., take over these activities. Interested students should do it in their own time on their own dime. If the public wants a bunch of socially popular students instead of educated workers, then they are to blame for this misplaced inclusion of the irrelevant. The most abuses are found in activities that shouldn't be funded at all, so the usual evasion of just eliminating abuses is insufficient for reforming education.

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Two words: Physical Education

LaMidRighter said:

That's because you held yourself accountable. Props to you on that.

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Thanks... Yeah, four years Varsity Track and three years for Cross Country. My Junior year I was cut and had to train to get back on. They only take top seven and we had 2,500 students so it was tough but worth it. I didn't make Varsity soccer until my senior year or tennis until my junior year. Iwas cut each time and just dealt with it.

Hell, in Cross Country our coach set it up so that the top seven times made the next Varsity team in a competition even if it was the next week. When I was on JV my junior year a couple of times I ran faster on that team than a guy on the Varsity team so I replaced him. I wasn't fit enough though to keep it up all year though. Just life. Ahhh the memories!

One of the best ways to learn is to lose... this lady is doing her kid a disservice.

Thrilla said:

we had a whole host of standards ( I played varsity football all 4 years).. C average, short hair, shaved, dressed nicely every day at school, .. and of course, you had to have talent to stay on the team.
the roster had a set number ... I can't remember the number, but we'll call it 40... and if you were number 41 after tryouts, you were cut.

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And rightly so... the best should play on the best team. We had Tony Gonzalez from the Kansas City Chiefs on our football and basketball team. He was a year behind me in school.

What an illogical lawsuit. This mom is foolish and probably just mad that her baby isn't going to be on a sports team. It's so funny how everyone wants to label everything their "Constitutional right."

Bodhisattva said:

Thanks... Yeah, four years Varsity Track and three years for Cross Country. My Junior year I was cut and had to train to get back on. They only take top seven and we had 2,500 students so it was tough but worth it. I didn't make Varsity soccer until my senior year or tennis until my junior year. Iwas cut each time and just dealt with it.

Hell, in Cross Country our coach set it up so that the top seven times made the next Varsity team in a competition even if it was the next week. When I was on JV my junior year a couple of times I ran faster on that team than a guy on the Varsity team so I replaced him. I wasn't fit enough though to keep it up all year though. Just life. Ahhh the memories!

One of the best ways to learn is to lose... this lady is doing her kid a disservice.

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Totally agree. Some of my proudest moments came from either fixing a mistake or adapting it to something new.

still looking for the sentence telling us that the lawyer who agreed to take on this case got sanctioned

if that doesn't happen, expect more of this stuff
what a waste of taxpayer dollars. filing suit because little johnny, the freshman, did not make the varsity tryout

that attorney's privilege as an officer of the court should be suspended - for a very long time

It appears to me the kid tried out twice and made it on the basketball team, only to be replaced by football players during a third try out. Frankly I think there's more to this story, that is missing here. If the tryout process was rigged, then I'd say the kid has some kind of legitimate complaint....but probably not the one in the law suit. This should probably be kept at the school board level. I find it somewhat suspicious that the football team members were brought in, probably the season being over. But we'd have to know more details.

American said:

It appears to me the kid tried out twice and made it on the basketball team, only to be replaced by football players during a third try out. Frankly I think there's more to this story, that is missing here. If the tryout process was rigged, then I'd say the kid has some kind of legitimate complaint....but probably not the one in the law suit. This should probably be kept at the school board level. I find it somewhat suspicious that the football team members were brought in, probably the season being over. But we'd have to know more details.

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doesn't matter if the cheerleaders replaced him on the varsity squad. the coach gets to pick who plays on school's team
there appears to have been no legitimate basis for a lawsuit to have been filed in this situation
and because of that, the attorney who did file the suit should be fined and sanctioned