Dad sues after son kicked off track team

If this kid wins the lawsuit, he will be soakin' it up in a hot tub with his soul mate.

 

Are you saying that everyone should make the team?

 

Yes. And everyone should get a trophy. And a scholarship.

 

I don't know about other states, but in California taxpayers contribute little to athletic programs. Other than upkeep for the fields and the small coaching stipends, athletic programs raise their own money, even to reimburse the school district for busing.

 

Why is there not a word in this about the younger son who got kicked off the JV team? They work just as hard!

 

Hate to see stuff like this.

But, the more I think about it, if it's a public school, how can you legally not offer equal access to everyone? How can you say to one person "you can't play" if you allow others to play? If you have to have 8 different sub-varsity basketball teams to accomodate everyone, so be it. Equal access under the law. This seems ripe for a court decision.

 

So are you saying their should be four separate casts of "Grease" because that many girls want to play Sandy?

And there should be three bands to accommodate everyone who wants to be drum major?

Everyone is guaranteed equal access to classroom education, but everything else is a bonus.

 

He was not disallowed from being on the team. He was kicked off the team for what sounds like disciplinary reasons and habitually not coming to practice.

 

I take it you're not a lawyer?

 

Neither, actually. I'd argue that the chance to compete is play on a team is fair game.

Part of my POV comes from a rather conservative idea: Being a good consumer. And nowhere, other than health care, is the relationship between consumer and provider so one-sided as it is in education. It isn't so much that I have a problem with kids not making the team. I have problem with paying for it, period. So long as I am paying for it, it might as well spread these universal lessons to as many kids as possible. What do I, as a taxpayer, care about which high school football team wins?

 

Very telling to me is the story never mentions the kid's times in ANY event. Not one.

Because if they did, the story would be over.

"Hey, my son runs the 200 meters in 29.37. But he won races in junior high school!"

 

School and city/town pride of course!

Seriously though, the kid was afforded the opportunity to be on the team but was clearly a constant problem, from demanding he bump seniors from their spot in races -- what about their right to compete and go after scholarships? -- to not showing up for practice. Kid should be learning some hard lessons right now that the world does not completely revolve around him, instead his elderly asshole dad, who has nothing better to do with his time, is going to drag the school through an absurd multi-million dollar lawsuit, costing the school division likely hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, all because he and his kid are self-entitled pricks.

As has been pointed out before, if he is that set on track, there are other avenues. If he is that good, transfer to another school or go the AAU route.

To me, this reeks of a cash grab, nothing more. The guy is a retired veteran, my guess is he has some medical bills that are piling up and needs an infusion of dollars. Not to mention this gains all kinds of attention for his son, but I don't think the kind of attention he wants.