The WVSSAC has decided to ask the State Supreme Court to overturn an injunction issued last week by Judge George Hill in Wood County Circuit Court. In the injunction issued last Friday, the WVSSAC was ordered to hold the AAA Pole Vault events and to count the points toward the team titles.
The attourney for the WVSSAC is William R. Wooten, (D), a member of the West Virginia State Senate out of Raleigh County. Mr. Wooton is chairman of the Judiciary committee and is also on several other committees including Banking and Insurance and Rules.
The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals has voted to consider overturning the injunction on June 13, 2000.
In a article in the Charleston Daily Mail, Wooton was quoted as arguing that is was the Games Committee's decision to cancel and that decisions by officials should not be overruled and that the state meet must by completed by the 47th week (which was May 27th).
Wooton will likely argue that upholding the injunction could set a dangerous precedent for overturning on field decisions. RunWV would argue this point on two fronts.
1. There is a clear difference (at least to anyone but a lawyer) between overturning a decision made by a committee outside of the confines of the event and overturning a botched call on a charging call, incomplete pass, etc.
2. We would also argue that the decision was not entirely up to the Games Committee. According to various reports, the WVSSAC made it clear that the meet was to be wrapped up that day. This pressure by the WVSSAC could cast doubt on who actually made the decision, the WVSSAC or the Games Committee.
The 47th week rule can be found on the WVSSAC site and goes as follows
127-3-30.3 Length of Season: The track and field season will end with the State Finals on Saturday of Week 47 (of the school year).
RunWV believes that this rule is not equitable to the sport of track. Lets take a quick look at the rules for end of season for all other sports sanctioned by the WVSSAC.
Baseball - Length of Season: The baseball season will end for each team upon the completion of the State Tournament
Basketball - Length of Season: The boys and girls basketball season will end for each team at tournament elimination
Cheerleading - Length of Season: The high school cheerleading season will end on the last day of the Girls' State Basketball Tournament or Boys' State Basketball Tournament.
Cross Country - Length of Season: The Cross Country season will end for each team or individual at tournament elimination.
Football - Length of Season: The football season will end for each team by Saturday of Week 18 or by playoff elimination. (change to Week 17 in year 2000)
Golf - Length of Season: The golf season will end for each team or individual at tournament elimination
Soccer - Length of Season: The soccer season will end for each team at tournament elimination or the Saturday prior to the playoff competition.
Softball - Length of Season: The softball season will end for each team upon the completion of the State Tournament.
Tennis - Length of Season: The tennis season will end for each team or individual at tournament elimination.
Volleyball - Length of Season: The volleyball season will end for each team by tournament elimination.
Wrestling - Length of Season: The wrestling season will end for each team or individual at tournament elimination.
All sports but Track are continued through tournament or individual elimination. It may not be fair to compare all these sports together, but those such as cross country, golf, tennis and wrestling that have both team and individual competitions are held to no such completion date rule as is track. Wooton was also quoted by the Charleston Daily Mail as arguing that the meet should be concluded by the 47th week since "primarily, school is out." Apparently, the same thinking does not hold true for baseball which didn't wrap until until one week after the state track meet was concluded.
The WVSSAC's decision to lean on this rule as a basis for their decision to cancel pole vault instead of postpone it and to fight tooth and nail in court leads you to ask another question: What if lighting and related weather had caused the entire second day to be wiped out? Would the WVSSAC have scrapped the whole thing and said, "Sorry, it's May 27th, the 47th week of the school year so everyone will just have to go home and we'll just count up the points from the four or five events that have been completed, declare a champion and then go home." We doubt that would have been the case, but the WVSSAC has made a point of saying it would be a violation of rules to go past that day so if they are sticking hard and fast to the rule, then it wouldn't make any difference to them if there were two events remaining or sixty. The prospect of such a decision is chilling and just goes to show you how unfair and without thought the track end-of-season rule is.
RunWV hopes that the Supreme Court Justices can see that this rule is clearly not equitable to that of all other high school sports in West Virginia (again, the only one that stipulates a season MUST end by a certain time) and that reversing the decision of the Games Committee would not open up on field decisions being taken to court. It had been our concern all along that the best interests of the vaulters would not be taken into account and that any sense of "the right thing to do" would be lost in a wasteland of red tape. It now appears that the WVSSAC is willing to string that red tape from Laidley Field all the way to the Supreme Court.
Since this case will not be heard until June 13th, another week will pass before it will even be possible to hold the event. As each day passes, it becomes less likely that the majority of vaulters will be able to attend. The flood of emails received from across the state (not just from Parkersburg, and not just from AAA related parties) by RunWV is proof that these vaulters want to jump, but time has a habit of moving on and the life of a teen can't be put on hold forever. Some aspects of this situation put us in the mind of the movie "The Rainmaker". In the movie, an insurance company wrongly refuses to pay for the treatment of a patient that will die without treatment. The case is finally won by the patient and his family, but not before the patient dies while waiting out the judicial process. Pole Vaulting is not a life or death situation, but the underlying story is the same: The longer it takes to remedy the situation, the more likely it is that a decision to hold the event will be a moot point. There will be no winners. If the injunction is overturned, all vaulters will have been denied the opportunity to compete, and Parkersburg will have been denied the opportunity to fight for the state championship. If the event is held, and Parkersburg jumps against less than a full field (which seems highly likely at this point), Capital will be unfairly penalized if the field is significantly reduced and Parkersburg scores its points due to decreased competition. The only way the situation will leave a clear champion is if all significant competitors (meaning virtually all of them) compete in a reinstated event or if Parkersburg fails to score the points necessary to catch Capital.
At the very least, we hope that this battle causes the WVSSAC to never again consider this course of action as an option.