“Press Box Perspective”
*I’ve been silent after the huge flap in North Carolina track and field this year when Mallard Creek lost a state championship then was allowed to share it after an incident involving an athlete making an inoffensive gesture on the track before his race ended. I think the final decision was the correct one, and I applaud the action taken by the NC High School Athletic Association to reverse the original call. But I think a lot of the criticism initially voiced was misdirected. The basic problem was not the ruling made by the track official that first cost Mallard Creek the title. The rule as I read it was badly written and should never have been put into the National Federation of State High School Association’s rule book. Basically, the rule said you weren’t allowed to make any kind of gestures before a race comes to an end. And it gives the official the freedom to call it as he or she sees it. There were multiple media reports of athletes making similar gestures during the same track meet where no penalty was assessed. Folks, that’s as old as sports. Different officials judge things differently. Just look at an umpire’s strike zone. No two are alike. Any rule that allows that kind of flexibility in making a call is going to cause a problem. Unfortunately, whenever you get a group of people together in a room to write rules, you’ll often find one person who has some obscure issue they have a concern about, and if they’re persuasive enough they get a majority of people in the room to agree and bang, you get a screwy rule.
Two words need to prevail every time any group gathers to put rules on paper. Common sense. What does the rule accomplish and how is the clearest way to write it. If we’d follow those two guidelines, rulebooks would make life easier for all of us. One final comment on track and field in general. Anyone who’s ever been to a track meet, and I covered a few NCHSAA state finals back in the day, know it’s got more moving parts than Apollo 11. Track and field rules are the abominable snowman of sports, wild and mysterious. I covered a regional meet one time where a relay team had competed all season long without incident, and was disqualified because their shorts didn’t match. Former Texas Sports Information Director Jones Ramsey was right. The quote “The only thing worse than track is field.’’ is attributed to him.
In memoriam Jack Chatham Smith Durante Griffin Grimsley Jeff Guffey
Southern Guilford Dick Jamback Mt. Tabor Bob Pharr Salisbury
NC Coach • Summer 2026 • Page 15 • nccoach.org
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