Posted on 11/11/2010 12:47:19 PM PST by jerry557
In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, October was all about the color pink, even in sports. MLB players wore pink wristbands. NFL teams wore pink wristbands and pink-edged hats, and in some cases, pink cleats. Everywhere you looked, pink was in vogue.
Evidently Mendenhall (Miss.) High School football coach Chris Peterson missed the memo.
According to the Associated Press, WLBT.com and USA Today, among other outlets, Peterson kicked 17-year-old placekicker Coy Sheppard, above, off the Mendenhall football team when Sheppard attempted to wear pink cleats in a practice following a game in October. As Sheppard explains in the video above, courtesy of WLBT.com, coaches ridiculed the kicker for wearing the shoes during the prior game, but he showed up for the team's Monday practice wearing the pink cleats regardless. Now the senior, who relied on academic credit from playing football to help fulfill graduation requirements, might not receive his diploma on time.
That inspired the player to file a lawsuit against the Simpson County School District, whose deputy superintendent, Tom Duncan, insisted that Sheppard was kicked off the team for failing to follow his coaches' instructions, not for the color of the shoes.
"It had absolutely nothing to do with lack of support for breast cancer awareness," Duncan told USA Today.
Yet the color of the shoes did have everything to do with breast cancer awareness. The cleats were a gift from Sheppard's 82-year-old great grandmother, a breast cancer survivor. Sheppard wore the cleats to honor her and his mother, also a breast cancer survivor.
"I do understand and we don't condone being disrespectful to the coaches," Joey Sheppard, Coy's father, told WLBT.com. "But he was standing up for what he thought was right. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at rivals.yahoo.com ...
“I do understand and we don’t condone being disrespectful to the coaches,” Joey Sheppard, Coy’s father, told WLBT.com. “But he was standing up for what he thought was right. ...
Then he should get to learn the lesson that, when you break the rules in order to make a principled stand on something you believe in, you should expect to have to face the consequences of the rules you broke. That makes the difference between an activist and a nincompoop.
a lot of school districts have a phys ed requirement
In California back in the ‘80s, my high school had a certain Phys Ed credit requirement that every student had to complete. We also had a swimming competency demonstration that we had to pass before we could graduate. They finally ended that program, but that went back to the 1950s at least.
“Do they get letter grades?”
It would seem pretty silly to get a B- in football wouldn’t it? Maybe they just use pass/fail when they count sports for PE credits.
Sounds like the coach is a jerk.
In Ohio, the kids still have to take one semester of phys ed to graduate and it is counted as a half-credit. But I’ve never heard of football or any other sports counting for it.
Depends on the state and the school. Some give letter grades that might be based on attendance and participation. Or they might just give either an “S” or “U” stands for satisfactory or unsatisfactory.
Many base graduation on the certain number of credits. When I was in high school, we needed 24 credits to graduate. Math, Science, English, and Social Studies courses were required each year. The other two credits are electives. That would be 6 credits per year, for 4 years would equal 24 credits. If you fail a class or get kicked out, you have to make it up in summer school or risk falling behind your class.
Well said. Right on the money.
I support the young man's intention of taking a principled stand. But either he didn't think it through, or he is now seen to be a whiner (or perhaps his family's lawyer is).
Very good. However,...
Well a legal problem the school might have is that they failed to establish and/or enforce a uniform code. Because other players on the team were wearing different color shoes and they didnt get kicked off.
If you are going to require your players to all wear black shoes, then you need to establish that policy and enforce it at the onset. And that’s what the judge is going to scold the school about, I guarantee it.
After that base requirement had been satisfied, all further P.E. credits were counted as 'elective' credits which were valued a lot less, unless you were on a sports team or in the marching band. 'Elective' credits were used for ceramics, art, singing, home-ec, and all the other non-academic classes. There was another requirement to take one year of a foreign language.
You couldn't just P.E. your way through high school in California back then, is what I mean. Only the University of California system allowed that. ;)
Arrrrgh ... trying to understand liberal thinking makes my brain hurt.
I worked for IBM many years ago and had to wear a white shirt, and dark, matching slacks and coat. That was the rules. I could not make up my own as I went along.
He’s been reinstated. You can read “the rest of the story” at the Sun Herald (Biloxi/Gulfport).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.