Student-Athlete with Down Syndrome, Originally Denied Chance to Play, Becomes State Champion

Student-athlete Eric Dompierre is a state champion football player, winner of Sports Illustrated’s “Underdogs” contest and an all-around inspirational young man. And he has Down syndrome.

Eric and his father, Dean, fought for two years trying to convince the MHSAA to create a waiver policy allowing student-athletes with disabilities to play one year past the current maximum age.

“I’m very excited,” Eric said after learning that he would be allowed to play football.

His football team, the Hematites, went on to win the MHSAA Division 7 state football championship last Friday with a near flawless season record. Eric kicked a number of extra points and even scored a touchdown during their championship season.

THis is a discussion board. We discuss things. We aren’t liberals, shutting down talk by trying to shame people into not discussing the issues.

The boy was not denied a chance to play football. He was on the team, just like every other kid could be on the team.

Now, because of his DS, he is behind a year in school. Guess what — there are a LOT of people who are behind a year in school, for all sorts of reasons. Some kids get in trouble for a while. Some don’t apply themselves. Some are not very bright. Some have disabilities.

The rules are easy enough. In order to keep adults from playing sports with kids (remember, 9th grade is high school in some places, 10th grade everywhere, and that can be 15 and 16-year-olds), they cut off eligibiity at 19 years old.

Of course, they also HAVE to do that, because if you didn’t you can guarantee that some coach, in order to get advantage, would find a way to get his kids to stay back a year, so he’d have a team full of adults playing kids.

In this case, parents of a kid who played football, but had been held back a year, argued that their particular circumstances should get special treatment.

And because we love the disabled, (look at ADA and the disibility insurance program), they were able to get the system to approve their special treatment.

This isn’t about some nice story of a disabled child getting a chance to be one of the regulars. This is about a boy, with some unspecified level of disability, getting to compete a year older than the other kids.

And he’s all-state. That means he is VERY GOOD. Which suggest that, at least in sports, he isn’t disabled, he is fully functional. And also older than all the other kids, probably larger, better-formed, more muscular.

So no, I don’t think it is rude or inconsiderate to consider whether we should allow adults to play with kids simply because the adult had a disability which resulted in them being held back a year.

The “2 years” just means that the father starting working on getting this waiver when his kid first started playing high school football.

Just like any child who has been held back a year, they high school a year older than everybody else. And if they are good athletes, when they make the teams, the parents are upset that the policy won’t allow their kid to play their senior year.

But this father had an angle that he was able to successfully play to get an exception for his kid.

So, do you suppose they require a genetic test to prove a child has DS, in order to qualify for the special exception? The article doesn’t say how they determine if a child is “disabled” for the purpose of the rule.

The article even throws in the discrimination card (it’s just like the race card, except conservatives don’t mind it so much) - “regulations barred him, and others with disabilities, from playing athletics after turning nineteen-years-old before September 1.”

See, it sounds like there is some special regulation that kept disabled people from playing when “normal” kids could. But the rule actually applied to EVERY kid, treating the disabled exactly the same as others.

What they wanted was SPECIAL treatment for disabled kids, to allow them to play a year older than the other kids.

They needed a 2/3rds approval. They actually only got 701 of 1535 schools to vote, but of those that did, 94% approved.

The new rule doesn’t give a blanket approval — it gives a committee, the “MHSAA Executive Committee”, the authority to approve requests on an individual basis.

So my guess is the criteria is going to be how many signatures you can get on a nationwide petition — since that seems to be how they got this done in the first place.

BTW, the article says that 26 states did NOT allow this; which means that 24 states already had some rules like this.

As for you GeronL, don't you ever post to me again. You're the lowest POC I can think of. You're worse than Obama in my book.

Well, I have been reading the comments on this post and I have to say, usconservative, that you are over reacting to an extreme degree. I do not believe the mods will do anything about GeronL's comment, but they might delete a few of yours for the profanity and personal insults you threw his way.

He stated an opinion, if you don't like that opinion you have the right to let him know, but in following the rules of FR, you need to be a little more circumspect with your responses to people you don't agree with.

We are not liberals after all.

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