Friday, December 11, 2009

How a pinstripe changed cross-country history


This story just posted to the New York Times Web site, and [this just in] appeared in the newspaper December 13.

I got interested in this after reading in the Baltimore Sun about a weird ending to a high school cross-country meet here in Maryland. The runner who'd finished fourth (out of 120 in the meet) was disqualified 15 minutes or so after the race. In turn, his team, which had been the apparent winner, dropped to third place.

The trangression of the runner, a nice young man named John Riemer? The compression shorts he had worn under his running pants were adorned with a thin white pinstripe. (Click on the image for a better view of the nonconforming shorts. John is wearing number 23). That violated a new and somewhat obscure high school rule that prohibits undershorts with "contrasting" stitching. I spent a morning at Hereford High School interviewing John and the Hereford cross-country coach, Jason Bowman.

It turns out that wardrobe malfunctions of this type crop up a few times each year.

1 comment:

Toras Hamonangan said...

how can a little thin strip can be violated the law?
i think the law must be re-form again