Teen misses senior [football] season by birthday 12 hours too early.

Yahoo ^ | 12/6/10 | Cameron Smith

[DemforBush]

Adam Sisson is a high school senior. The teenager has spent his entire life dreaming of his senior seasons in high school sports, where he expected to be a star for the Eastern Montgomery (Va.) High football, basketball and baseball teams. Then, just days before his final high school year began, Sisson was given a shock: He was told that he was too old to play in Virginia high school sports by exactly 12 hours...

[DemforBush]

Interesting article.

[fso301]

Rules are rules. The same rules would have allowed him to begin playing a year earlier than most.

[Jim Noble]

Someday, I'll write a book called "The Hundred Worst Things About Youth Sports".

Idiots who pretend not to understand the birthday thing are in the top 10.

When this kid was pitching fastballs to 11-year olds at (effectively) 13 years old, I'm sure he and his parents were fine with it.

[knarf]

Excellent example of laws and rules and regs that are so massive, cumbersome and convoluted we’ve lost the entire point of an education ... forming a boy into a man.

[Alberta's Child]

I can sympathize with someone in a position like this, but he's got nothing to complain about as far as the rules are concerned. The rules regarding age limits are there for a reason -- and no matter what the "hardship" in question may be, there's no way in hell a 19 year-old should be allowed to play high school sports.

FWIW, many of the state high school athletic associations that imposed rules like this did so to address legitimate concerns about parents who deliberately kept their kids back in the earlier grades just so they could dominate high school sports teams.

[BykrBayb]

Wasn’t there an episode about this on The Beverly Hillbillies, when Jethro was in the fifth grade?

[nikos1121]

Exactly. Maybe they kept him out a grade to do just that.

Kneeling in the endzone while holding the ball and pointing upwards, is a delay of game penalty. It has nothing to do with anyone’s lack of tolerance for your faith.

The people on this site that fall for it, make us look stupid, as stupid as we think the left looks to us.

I haven’t read all the posts here, but I’m sure there will be several that disagree with us....

[Tax-chick]

Yep.

[maica]

Malcolm Gladwell, of Freakonomics fame, wrote Outliers to describe how influences outside of the control of an individual help to lead to success. One of the chapters was about the birthdays of hockey players. A huge percentage of NHL players were born in January, February or March. This can be tracked back to the fact that the age-group cutoff for youth hockey teams was December 31. So coaches in all the leagues had boys who could be almost a year older than some of their teammates. These boys generally were bigger, stronger, more able to improve with coaching, etc.

Birthdate is as uncontrolled by the individual as height or eye color, but it does have influence on the individual's life patterns.

Outliers

[vetvetdoug]

Rules are rules. I played my Senior year at 16 years old and managed to make hon mention all state in Texas in one of the most competitive districts in the state. I would have loved to have played high school football at 17-19...I just think what I could have done. But rules are for everybody, no exceptions.

[InvisibleChurch]

Yes, but he was only trying to get a jump on being a brain surgeon not an athletic career. Sheesh!

[sweet_diane]

If he was talented enough, I’m sure they could have found a loophole.

[BykrBayb]

Wow. I was reading a story about a stupid brain surgeon when you posted that to me. Although, I don't Jethro was ever as stupid as this guy.

Surgeon had piles of cash and cocaine at fatal Valentine's Day prostitutes' party, court told

[calex59]

Rules are rules. I played my Senior year at 16 years old and managed to make hon mention all state in Texas in one of the most competitive districts in the state. I would have loved to have played high school football at 17-19...I just think what I could have done. But rules are for everybody, no exceptions.

Yep, I started school early also and played football as a 16 YO senior, almost a year behind my buddies.

[Elderberry]

When my son was in Middle School. Halfway through the season, it was discovered that a player on our team was too old.
The records were changed to show our team was disqualified in all of our games up until the player was removed from the team.

[RGSpincich]

When this kid was pitching fastballs to 11-year olds at (effectively) 13 years old, I'm sure he and his parents were fine with it.

And you are sure this happened? Little League, Pop Warner and similar programs are based on age (and weight in football) groupings not school grade groupings. This kid should have always been at least one league ahead of that 11 year old.

That being said this kid is TWO full years older than I was my Senior year. That does seem a bit peculiar.

[SampleMan]

forming a boy into a man.

He would be almost 20 at graduation, many such "boys" have already been in the work force or military for two years.

Picking a cut off date might be arbitrary, but its fair if fairly applied, and picking one is most certainly sensible.

Its not that uncommon for fanatic parents to hold their children back a year to gain unnatural advantage. The flip side to that is that they lose a year or two on the outer end.

[SampleMan]

Delay of game isn’t an action, its a time period. Kneeling for 3 seconds isn’t delay of game, nor is jumping in joy for 3 seconds.

[knarf]

Obviously I'm not up on scholastic sports.

I'm reading these posts and adding to my understanding.

I quit at 17 to go into the Army in '65, so the whole age thing is irrelavent to me.

[ladyjane]

I immediately thought of Outliers when I read this article. Gladwell writes well and I liked the book a lot. Unfortunately he knows very little about epidemiology and research design and draws a few unwarranted conclusions. Interesting though.