October 28, 2009

Tom Bergeron
Rivals High Senior Editor

For the color of the stitches on his undergarment.

That's right, the fourth-place finisher for Hereford in the Baltimore County championships on Monday was disqualified because the black compression shorts he was wearing under his running shorts had visible white stitching, a violation of the rules set forth by the National Federation of High Schools.

The rule clearly states that all undergarments must be a single color.

"They can take the plaque away, but they can't take away the race," Hereford co-coach Jason Bowman told Jeff Seidel of The Baltimore Sun. "Our kids ran great today."

Before you cry outrage and label this as another incident of the enforcement of zero-tolerance rules gone awry in a high school (OK, we'll admit, that's going to be easy to do), understand this: Cross-country teams had been given ample warning of this - and it's a rule that was created by cross-country and track coaches from around the country.

"It's one of those things that unfortunately got called on," Ned Sparks, the head of the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association, said. "It's been on the books for years but just hasn't been enforced. This year they made it clear it was going to be enforced."

But why? Why would the color of stitching on an undergarment be a concern?

Becky Oakes, the rules editor for the National Federation of High Schools, said it's something the sport wanted - and needs.

"Cross-country is a team championship and your still trying to identify from runners from a particular school, just as you would with basketball and football," she said. "As you begin to add more colors it's becomes more challenging to identify a team."

In recent years, Oakes noted that apparel manufactures started creating more dynamic undergarments - which in cross country and track are skin-tight apparel and used as much for warmth as style.

The style side, however, went too far.

"Kids were making a mockery of it," Sparks said. "Wearing tiger-striped spandex underneath their uniform."

While Oakes notes how football and basketball T-shirt undergarment policies have been enforced for years, she realizes cross-country offers different sets of circumstances.

"You have regular season where you may not have as many officials at meets," she said. "Maybe the uniforms aren't checked over as carefully so kids don't know if it's legal or not legal. When you get to championships, you start having more officials and there are more things they are able to observe, which they should."

But we're talking about stitching.

Oates laughs and realizes how people could be stunned by the detail of the rule. But she said having the single-color rule - even down to the stitching - eliminates confusion.

"When the rules didn't really address the stitching, we actually had to deal with confusion of what's single color and what's not," she said. "It eliminates that little bit of judgment. We were finding some discrepancies from one official to another and the athlete wouldn't know from one meet to the next what he or she could or couldn't wear."

And since cross-country athlete often carries their uniform to indoor and outdoor track seasons, Oakes said it was important to set a single-color standard that works for all sports. And, she points out, there is some flexibility.

"The basic rule is that it needs to be a single solid color," she said. "It doesn't have to match the shorts or top, just has to be the same color."

But should a violation cost a team a championship? Sparks said you can't pick and choose which rules to enforce and when to enforce them, regardless of their overall effect.

"Did it have any impact on the outcome of the race? No," he said. "I guess you can say it's a picky rule, but where do you draw the line?"

Perhaps at the shoelaces.

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