Forums >General Running>High school bans road running
True, and CC is one of the first to be a victim of budget cuts.
Right after wrestling that is.
Proboscis Colossus
I'm sure it is risk avoidance, not injury avoidance. And I'd bet a fair amount of money this rule came about after a parent or two spoke up at a board meeting about how dangerous it is for the KIDS to be out RUNNING...on the ROAD!!
Someone mentioned how this sends a message to the parents that their kids aren't trusted not to hurt themselves...maybe, but I've never heard of a district being sued for that. Sued for a kid getting hurt during a school activity? Drop of a hat.
Anyway, our CC team runs on the roads, but these are back country roads, the same ones I use for my training runs. You'll have a car (well, truck. Or tractor.) pass you maybe one every five minutes or so. Probably more right after school lets out. Still, though, I have always thought of what a poop-storm it would be if one of them got clipped, or even just twisted an ankle on the "pavement." If the district just keeps them on their trail, at least it's an environment they have control over.
"God guides us on our journey, but careful with those feet." - David Lee Roth, of all people
MTA: your CC coaches get paid? Here it is a volunteer job.
Yup. CC has a whopping coaching budget of 1.5 professional coaches that covers both boys and girls. Like 60 kids.
It's crumbs in an athletic budget of $370k, which itself is crumbs in a school dept budget of $39m. Nobody ever comes after cc or track in my town when they're looking for budget money. I've seen no evidence of cc (or track) being the first thing people come after when there are budget cuts. I'm not saying we're representative of everywhere but that's been my experience.
Runners run
Why is it sideways?
As a sometime XC coach in sometimes urban areas, having a kid get hit by a car is a REAL worry, not just a matter of insurance clauses or covering of hineys.
I understand why a school would want to have a policy like this, and I think that if it weren't for the fact that XC flies mostly under the radar for most administrators and that most of them have no idea that kids are out running all over the city, this would be much more common as a policy.
Of course the proper response to this problem is to teach safety to kids and have them run in safe areas, and maybe not have an administrative mandate about it, but I guess I don't see this mandate as hugely unreasonable, given that there is a safe place for the kids to run.
Prince of Fatness
Where I live if wrestling ever got cut there would be riots in the streets.
Not at it at all.
Having just graduated from High School I can completely understand the runner's and parent's frustrations. My junior year, some of the ladies on the girl's side decided to start wearing just sports bras for practice. Now they weren't the all-stars so they weren't all that fast on their training runs, nor were they the brightest for deciding to go into some sketch areas down town. well this led to an incident, and from then on they all had to wear shirts as a rule. That's where it impacted the guys side. Not only did we have to begin wearing shirts at practice (after 3+ yrs of not it ****ing sucked) but they proposed we had to stay on campus, which by the way was only maybe 1.5 miles on the perimeter, not ideal for 50+ miles/wk. Keep in mind it was still the girl's team's incident and the guys were getting just as much heat for it. So in all reality the amount of stupidity that comes from someone sitting behind a desk no longer astonishes me, especially when they themselves never have to live with their own policies. Reminiscent of Dick Doobey for all you OAR fans out there.
Curious, I did a little search about the most dangerous high school sports. I found a story that cites the data from the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research at UNC. The data looks at participation, including practice. They list about 15 high school sports, including cheerleading, and cross country is completely missing from the list. There is probably a long list of activities that could be banned that are more dangerous than running on the roads. It's sad to note that Track and Field is on the list, mostly due to field events. During my senior year of high school I was at a meet that had a discus related fatality of a kid from another team. It was a very bad day.
PA/OH? It looks like it's back in the Olympics...
One day at a time
Our HS XC team has 40 to 50 kids. One paid coach and a couple of volunteers. I don't envy the kids today - it's 91 degrees now and very humid. In Maine! They're not used to this heat.
Yes, not surprising.
I'm sure you can imagine what would ensue if they made a rule that the girls had to wear shirts whereas the guys did not.
Depends on where you live and how good your school is at non-revenue sports
With recent state titles (25 years ago) Wrestling would never be cut
CC had some good results, but seemed isolated
Tennis & golf was mid-pack at best and frequently were threatened
I am fuller bodied than Dopplebock
I just checked my high school web page and was relieved to see wrestling is still there.
I was also reminded that we had and still have a rifle team. How about that as a school sport?
that would have been the same at my HS. It's the only sport that regularly made individual and team trips to state, and other than "rifle" when it was a sport, it's the school's only state championship.
Feeling the growl again
Nice. It's never been all that common. I think trap shooting is actually more common at the HS level. I shot rifle in college, but even at that level it was not all that widespread. Facilities and equipment for it are relatively pricey.
"If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does. There's your pep talk for today. Go Run." -- Slo_Hand
I am spaniel - Crusher of Treadmills
NJ but close to the Lehigh Valley in PA. People are wrestling fanatics around here.