The Dallas Morning News highlighted five high school sports stories from the 2010-11 school year.
Care to take a guess what one of them was?
Electronic swim timers fail
At the UIL state swim meet in February, the Southlake Carroll girls team lost the 5A title when its 400-yard freestyle relay was disqualified for an early exchange. Video footage showed that the swimmer didn’t leave early, and officials watching the lane ruled that the exchange was good.
But the electronic timing system ruled that it wasn’t legal, and its ruling stood, despite its imperfections. At the state meet, the timing systems that calculate finishes and splits and relay exchanges malfunctioned at least 28 times. A Highland Park relay team was also disqualified for an exchange that looked legal in photographs.
“It’s not going to go away if we don’t sit there and solve the problem,” Highland Park swim coach Jesse Cole said. “Unfortunately, a couple of teams have had to take some big hits to make that happen.”
It is sad that swimming makes it to the top 5 for THIS. It is even worse that malfunctioning equipment is a top 5 story and the UIL has yet to make ANY changes to this rule. NFHS will look at it - but only AFTER the 2012 state meet. How very helpful!
ReplyDeleteI repeat - WHERE ARE THE MANUFACTURERS IN ALL THIS??????? I'm not saying they are to blame but to the uninformed it must look like that. We should hear from them and they should say, "our equipment is highly accurate but we never said it would not malfunction, we never said it was perfect and we never said you didn't need a back up. This is why we put plungers on the pads. We RECOMMEND a back up to all electronics that are near water. The form of the back up is completely up to the UIL/NFHS/NCAA officials." That wouldn't be so hard, would it??? Has anyone even asked them their opinion of all of this? Has anyone asked them whether they said their equipment was 100% perfect? Has anyone even asked them whether they recommend a back up?
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