All good rules are not meant to be broken, but what about if there’s a flaw in the wording?

We all get sick at one time or another. I’ve been lucky not to, two years in a row so far. Must be the flu shot! But, the rest of my family hasn’t been so lucky.

A couple weeks ago my son, Brandon came down with something nasty - the kind of cold that clogs your lungs and drains all the energy from your body. Thus, I kept him home from school on a Friday.

I knew he would have to make up his two mid-term tests. That wasn’t a problem with me. And, I was aware that he wouldn’t be able to play in the J.V. basketball game that night.

What I didn’t realize at the time, was that the athletic policy on absences at Memorial High School says you cannot participate in after-school activities until the next school day. Whoever wrote that policy was blind to the fact that high schools have events on weekends. In fact, Brandon had a freshman basketball game that Saturday morning, and a make-up J.V. game that Sunday. He found out about the policy from his varsity football coach just before the freshmen game started that Saturday, since it doesn’t seem to be made public by the school.

I would imagine that this rule wasn’t meant to punnish the students who have an excused absense on a Friday. Would it have been better to send him to school, and infect the population there with his cold, just so that he could play ball over the weekend? What if this would have been the Friday before Christmas break, and the team was in a holiday tournament? Would they then have to sit out the whole nine days?

The powers that be at the school, or school district, need to tweek the rule, and change the wording to “the next day,” rather than “the next school day.” Teams practice and play games on the weekends throughout the school year. Keeping the player out of sports for the entire weekend is a punishment, rather than a deterant from skipping school. If they would be healthy enough to play any other weekday, the weekend should be fair game too!

-Bob Hammerstrom

bhammerstrom@nashuatelegraph.com

Tags: absense, athletic, athletics, bob hammerstrom, Brandon, Day, High, manchester, Memorial, off, policy, School, sick, team