In Uniform: Baltimore County Cross Country Championships(Photo: Baltimore Sun)
This is a story getting some legs – about the Baltimore area high school cross country team that lost a championship because of a uniform rules violation involving Spandex undergarments.
In local and national newspaper sports and editorial pages, blogs and readers forums, debaters are asking when is a seemingly insignificant rule infraction worth distorting the outcome of the competition. A larger view is whether some rules should be overlooked to maintain the purity of competition.
On Oct. 26, a runner for Hereford High School's boys cross country team competing in the Baltimore County championships wore Spandex beneath his uniform shorts sporting a white pinstripe on the side instead of a solid color as a Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association uniform rule requires.
The rule says the undershorts have to be the same color as the uniform shorts. Six other runners at competing schools were disqualified as well. The rule was changed in Maryland over the past year to conform with a national governing body.
Hereford, a Mecca for cross country located along rolling hills and lush pastures in the hamlet of Parkton in far northern Baltimore County, won the championship. But not long afterward, the celebrating stopped. Meet officials bumped the superior Bulls team down to fourth place after the runner was disqualified for the wayward undergarment stripe.
Losing the county championship was a tough one for Hereford. They grow premier cross country runners at Hereford like daisies that sprout up in spring on the countryside. Since the agriscience school opened in 1954, the Bulls have won 12 boys state championships and five girls titles. The school’s annual "Bull Run" Cross Country Invitational attracts more than 100 schools along the East Coast, and the challenging Hereford course hosts the state cross country championships November 14.
So why punish a cross country powerhouse over an obscure stripe on compression shorts when it had the best team as born out by the competition? Simply, the Hereford runner broke the rule.
Indeed, rules are made to be broken, as the saying goes, but you get caught and you pay the piper. Rules keep the competition honest and keep the playing field level. They must always be applied evenly.
Hardly cross country, but consider some rules established by the Southern Maryland Invitational Livestock Expo and Horse Show held annually at fairgrounds in St. Mary’s County in southern Maryland. One says steers and heifers must be dehorned and healed. Another says dairy goats must have a collar. And still another requires that market lambs must be slick shorn.
So should you win the blue ribbon if your dairy goat comes in collar-less? While not knowing anything about livestock, the answer has to be a resounding "no." Where's the collar? Whether it makes sense or not, there is a reason for a collared dairy goat – whatever it is. Same with the Hereford runner. There is a reason for solid-color Spandex -- versus ones with a thin stripe or even tie-dye, Fergie screenshots or American flags.
Wearing Spandex under uniforms is a fairly recent phenomenon among athletes. Maryland officials noticed their proliferation and sought to standardize them with the actual uniforms.
In Amateur Athletic Union basketball, there is a rule that asserts uniforms cannot be adorned with logos or advertising of sponsors. Seems silly considering that a logo could support a cash-strapped amateur team with the cost of its uniforms. But it is the rule.
"Barely noticeable" beneath the Hereford runner's uniform is how one report described the infraction. On a reader's forum on the Baltimore Sun Website, one writer decried the lack of "common sense" in such rules. And there were suggestions that the team being elevated to champion after the disqualification should refuse the trophy. Nonsense, if they followed the rules.
Often times, officials running athletic events will overlook the rules, especially on uniforms. (You should see some of the rules violations that occur in AAU over uniforms, but teams and players still get to participate.) Rule violators will hit you with the "what difference does it make" consideration or that the "player will be hurt" if not allowed to participate.
The notion of following the rules, whatever they are, does not rise to the level of a teachable moment.
As a coach, parent or player, you just read the rule, inform your team and follow it. As an athletic official, you just enforce it.
More: A look at Hereford cross country
