Petition to allow some disabled students to play past current age limit.

[spikechiquet]

A Michigan dad is trying to petition the MHSAA to allow his 19-year-old son who has Downs Syndrome to play football next season.
According to his webpage, 23 states allow this. Currently Michigan does not.
Doesn't this open the door to possible fraud (I guess it would depend on the language in the rule and if a loophole could be found), or is this actually a feel-good thing that needs to be done?

https://www.change.org/petitions/mhsaa-allow-some-disabled-students-to-play-for-1-year-past-the-current-age-limit

 

[Baron Scicluna]

 

[Starman]

Years and years and years ago, I was taking phone calls at a Michigan paper.

The Michigan School for the Deaf was in a league that played some of our area teams (in Class D, the lowest classification). They wouldn't call their games in to us themselves, but opposing teams would.

They were usually pretty bad. They would win 2-3 games in a normal season. One year, the team was as bad as ever, but as the season went on and we would get their games called in, it turned out they had a kid averaging some 20 points a game.

Late in the season I was taking a call from the coach of the juggernaut team in the league -- undefeated and ranked top-5 in the state. They played School for the Deaf and beat them something like 73-56.

So as he was reading off the boxscore, he was going "Smith 1 2-2 4, Jones 2 0-0 6, Brown 3 1-2 7, Danny Deafguy 14 9-11 37," and I said, "geeze that Deafguy kid has been scoring 20 ppg all season, we thought he was just running up points against awful teams, but you guys are top-5 ranked, if he can score 37 on you he must actually be pretty good," and coachy boy completely flies off the handle: "OH GOD DAMN IT I am sick and tired of hearing about that ****in' guy, HE'S TWENTY YEARS OLD and everybody knows it, if he was a real high school kid going to a real high school he would never set foot on the court, I could run down to our local rec league and find all sorts of guys who are 22 years old who were all-county for me five years ago and they'd score 37 points for us too, I am sick and tired of hearing about that ****er!!!"

So I said, "Well OK then. Who led you in rebounding?"

 

[NoOneLikesUs]

Dealt with a 19-year-old football player who used a politically connected uncle to get an extra year of eligibility once. They went as far as saying he was mildly retarded, but the kid set the single-season school record for rushing the year before. He sucked ass his senior season, but went on to graduate with honors from college.

 

[HanSenSE]

So, we should mainstream these kids as quickly as possible, unless they run a 4.2 40 or are deadly from 3-point land?

 

[LongTimeListener]

Dealt with a 19-year-old football player who used a politically connected uncle to get an extra year of eligibility once. They went as far as saying he was mildly retarded, but the kid set the single-season school record for rushing the year before. He sucked ass his senior season, but went on to graduate with honors from college.

If his academic and athletic credentials are as you say, Steve Spurrier is interested.