PEA RIDGE — Although not in a totally unprecedented action, an Arkansas judge has issued an injunction that may well succeed in canceling the 2009 State 3A state football playoffs.
It seems that a football player from Russellville decided that he wanted to play for Lamar this season, his junior year in high school. The player in question went to live with his grandparents in Lamar with his parents signing over custodial rights to the grandparents so he could legally attend school in Lamar.
However, legally attending school and legally participating in extracurricular activities for a school are two different kettles of fish.
The Arkansas Activities Association has a page on their Web site and in their manual that deals with how athletes may legally change their domicile in order to be eligible for interschool activities like football.
There are 13 criteria that a prospective athlete, such as the student in question, must meet in order to be considered a legitimate member.
When AAA executive director Lance Taylor reviewed the evidence provided by Lamar High School, he ruled that the athlete in question did not meet a single one of the 13 criteria mandated by the state association, thus making his move “non-bona fide.” His ruling meant that Lamar had to forfeit five games, effectively knocking them out of the playoffs. The forfeits also elevated Atkins High School into the playoffs, replacing Lamar.
Lamar appealed Taylor’s ruling to the subcommittee of theAAA board of directors, but the panel reached the same conclusion that Taylor did, thus denying the appeal and allowing the AAA to set up the playoffs without Lamar. Lamar then approached Circuit Court Judge Gordon McCain of Russellville, asking for an injunction. In a move that I think completely bolts the parameters of the proper role of judges in a democratic society, the judge decided that yes, the student was in violation of the AAA rules of competition, but because he (the judge) didn’t like the rules in question, he decided to set aside the AAA rules of competition, ordering Lamar to be included in the playoffs.
The Lamar superintendent of schools Roy Hester referred to the dictionary, claiming that bona-fide meant “good faith” and since nobody meant to break any rules, there should be no penalty for doing so. At the hearing before Judge Mc-Cain, Lamar claimed that the student had left Russellville because he had been threatened physically, with that situation qualifying the student as a hardship case, something the AAA allows under extreme and unusual circumstances. The problem with that argument was that it never came up at Russellville or even at Lamar until the day of the hearing last week.
That story was never told to the AAA, RussellvilleHigh School or even Lamar High School, which was rather odd if that was in fact the chief reason for the move to Lamar. Even in the hearing, the parents provided no proof or documentation backing up their claim of hardship.
The case is fairly black and white. The player in question broke AAA competition rules which brought with it penalties, penalties that have been voted on and accepted by the membership of the Arkansas Activities Association. The clod in the churn in this case is the judge in Russellville who has confused interpreting the law with making the law.
When this country was founded over 200 years ago, our forefathers had enough of English law and sought to set up a society governed by laws, laws that could be understood and enforced evenly across the board.
Over the past few years, there have been more and more instances of judges ignoring law, substituting their own “wisdom” in place of enacted law, a development that I find extremely troubling.
A lot of people have sought to portray the U.S. Constitution as a “living” document, code speak for “it means what we want it to mean.” In the old days, if we didn’t like a law, we sought to have it changed or we worked to enact a better law. Nowadays, there are those who are most happy to just ignore a law,citing “good intentions” to validate any kind of behavior.
Because of the judge’s injunction forbidding the 3A playoffs to go on without Lamar, the playoffshave been put on hold.
With the championship game set for early December, there can’t be many more delays if the playoffs are to be gotten in this season.
There were 20 teams set to play last Friday (the injunction was released last Thursday afternoon) and some did not find out about the postponement until a few hours before game time.
In one very sad development, Parkers Chapel High School lost $2,400 when they had to cancel their chartered bus trip after the deadline to do so. This was the first time in their school history that Parker’s Chapel had made the playoffs and they chartered a bus to commemorate the occasion. Who can Parker’s Chapel sue to get theirmoney back?
Judges with their superior “wisdom” often create situations with unintended consequences.
Judge McCain probably felt bad about the boy’s circumstances but they were circumstances created by the boy’s parents, grandparents and, possibly, his school. The hundreds of young men deprived of playing football last week with the attendant monetary loss by a great many schools dwarfs the difficulties faced by the young man and his school. How many more hundred fans have had their plans disrupted, how many referees will face nightmare schedules, and howmany other folks will suffer some kind of inconvenience due to this “activist” judge’s sense of “fairness”?
May the Almighty save us from these “wise” judges.
Sports, Pages 8 on 11/18/2009