Improper Stitching Costs Cross Country Team A Title

There are dumb rule violations and then there are dumb rules being violated, and I'm not sure if I've heard of any regulation stupider than the one that cost a Baltimore high school a county cross country championship.

The Hereford boys dominated the Baltimore County championship yesterday, but one of their runners (who finished fourth overall) was disqualified from the race because he was wearing compression shorts under his uniform. Oh, the shorts themselves aren't a problem. (That might even make sense.) It's that the shorts were black, but the stitching on the shorts was white.

That violates Rule 9, Section 6, Article 1b of the National Federation of High Schools rule book, which states: "Items displaying seams stitched on the outside of the garment in a visible contrasting color to the undergarment will be illegal beginning with the 2009-10 school year."

Un ... believable. I imagine that the person who actually had to type this edict into the Hammurabi's Code of teenage racing underwear must have thrown themselves off a bridge once they realized how futile and pointless their existence had become. By losing the points for the fourth place finisher, Hereford dropped to third in the team standings and the trophy when to a rival high school.

But you know who the real loser was yesterday? America.

Uniform violation costs Bulls title [Baltimore Sun]

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