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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.