Looks like Gracy may have a first round consolation match with Bishop Carroll. Understand the Wichita Arch Diocese doesn't have the same rules, but would you forfeit out of the state tournament over this ruling by the Arch Bishop?

Also an interesting stroke of fate that Gracy got drawn into the lower bracket. Had she been in the upper bracket one of the wrestlers from STA or SJA would have faced a very difficult decision of forfeiting away a chance at state.

Am I to understand that the ruling refers to inappropriate touching between a boy and a girl?

But the inappropriate touching is OK between two boys?

Serious question identifying the irony.

It is my understanding that the Aquinas, Bishop Miege and St. James wrestlers do not have any decision at all to make if they are scheduled to wrestle a girl in a match. The coaches from those schools are not allowed by the Bishop of the Archdiocese of Kansas City Kansas to permit their wrestlers to wrestle the match so they would have to forfeit the match.

Jerry- I have to practice until I get it right.

The court ruling previously cited made no mention of contact, whether inappropriate or otherwise, and just ruled that girls could compete against boys.

The Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas has 5 high schools- Aquinas, St. James, Miege, Immaculata and Maur Hill, if am I not misstaken. I understand the instruction from our Archbishop to only include our archdiocese. I coach at Aquinas, and I know Miege and St. James have complied with the rule, I have no knowledge of the other 2 schools. By the way, Bishop Carroll is in another archdiocese and to my understanding are not operating under the same restrictions.

We are specifically instructed to follow our directive, and to publicly support our archdiocese. I think all of you would do the same, in our circumstance.

Good luck to all at state. Jerry, take some Tums.

Tom Williams

Tom,

I can appreciate the difficult situation this puts you in personally. If you wrestle the kid against the girl, bad things will happen for you. What if this ruling was appealed to above the Arch Diocese level in the Catholic church? This ruling appears to be inconsistent with most of the other regions around the country. I'm not aware of any Arch Diocese's that have made a ruling like this. It looks like this is decision was based on the opinion of one man, not the Caholic church.

It also might of just opened the can of worms nationally too. Some potential ramifications that might occur would affect other sports. What happens if one of the schools in the Archdiocese plays football against a school with a girl on the team, would they have to forfeit the game?

Fan- Such actions are presumably possible, but not really feasible or even rational. From our perspective, we can all individually agree or disagree with the circumstance, but this matter is effectively concluded, for now.

Analogy- Referee's call (see other forum topic). Do we all agree that this young man should suffer disqualification? Probably not, but what can be done at this time?

Take care.

Tom Williams

Somehow, I knew you would. Please eat gas free food this week so we don't have to clear out Hartman Arena.

Easy for me to say this, since I do not teach/coach/etc for a living:

If I'm the coach, I let the boys wrestle, lose my job, and see if Tom Williams, attorney extraordinaire, could get it back for me after the season......

I don't think that was a fart.

Tom,

Yes its done for this year, with the exception of the girl maybe pulling an upset at State and causing a real tough decision. But I can see this situation rearing its ugly head in the future for the you and the other Catholic schools in KCK.

Doug that's an awful big risk seeing that he's just practicing

My two cents...after all these posts, the attacks, the name calling, and the reasoning.
I think it boils down to decisions that have unfortunate consequences. A decision to not allow
competetors to compete based upon religious reasons was made. Agree or disagree,
does not matter. This decision should have effected only the people at those institutuions.
People agree by their membership, to abide by those decisions and possible consequences.
You don't like it ....leave, but if you stay you are agreeing to follow the directives.

Unfortunatly it seems no one at those institutions like the decision mandated to them
(boys can't wrestle girls) and the consequenses (forfeit the match, or get suspended, get your
Coach fired......). This should have been their problem. But rather than suffer, from this self inflicted
consequence. Another decision was made, with help from KSHSAA? According to some,
Adults in charge,both inside the institutions and outside looked to circumvent this Self
Inflicted situation. Another decision, a calculated, well thouhght out use the rules,
to forfeit and avoid the mandate and consequences. A great idea if it only effects you.....
but this was not the case. By choosing this path people outside these institutions were
negativly impacted. That is where this takes a dark path.

Make no mistake, I feel for all the kids involved, none of them wanted this.
They were manipulated just as the competition, the bracket and, results were. That
is why this has caused such a divided and strong response.

This should have been handled in their house. Instead, a decision was made
that shifted their problems to others, and all of this was done by Adults
of strong faith and conviction. This is the part that is really difficult to
stomach. I would hope put in the same situation I would have the
courage to do the right thing, whatever that is.

I don't really have an answer, but as time goes by I would hope the Adults
involved, be it a Parent, a Coach, an AD, a KSHSAA official.......or even a Bishop, will
really look at their decisions, their actions and those consequences, to others.

Purple dad.....best post on this issue. Well done.

Reminds me of Fred Phelps' power among his people... let them wrestle.. are we in the stone age? Is this any different than a white athlete refusing to compete against a black athlete? It is the 21st century... what are we teaching our athletes??? Our KIDS??? nuff said!

Mr. Bennett, that is a very good post. I have decided to comment on the paragraph above, especially the sentence that I highlighted in red from your post. I think that sentence is really at the heart of this unfortunate situation. People are going to be adversely effected no matter what decision is made by the officials in charge.

If that directive from the Bishop had been made for the 2008-2009 season my son and his Aquinas teammates could have been effected. I discussed this possibility with my son a week ago when I first heard of the problem that was developing with the 113 pound class. My son told me that he would have wrestled the girl. I told him the Aquinas coaches would not be allowed to let him wrestle and could not sit in the coaches seat so the referee would not start the match. My son had been wrestling since the first grade. He had placed at state the previous two years. Wrestling was a major part of his life at that point and he really wanted to win a state title his senior year. He would have been devastated to had to give up that opportunity by forfeiting due to the directive from the Bishop.

So what would have been the right answer for my son at that point in his life? I really do not know. I suppose he could have transferred to a public school for his senior year but that would have been a very difficult decision at that point in his life. My son would have probably ultimately stayed at Aquinas a school and community that he loved. The odds are at his weight 215 weight class that he would not have been effected but there was a possibility that he could have been. And if the rule was that once you forfeit that you automatically forfeit for the rest of the regional and would not have qualified for the state tournament that would have been a very difficult and disappointing outcome for him or any other wrestler.

This is just a very unfortunate situation and the bad thing is that due to no fault of their own some wrestler or wrestlers can be adversely effected by it. I really hope the Bishop reconsiders and changes his policy on this in the future.

I have said this twice now to try to help these guys out. I would hope that some kind of answer would be in the fact that a Maur Hill boy has wrestled more than one girl this year. He did it, so what is going to happen? Very least, I would hope the other schools could use this to help their fight. One of his girl matches was at a tourney were another Catholic boy forfeited twice. Another happened at regionals.

Goodness! Could you make a better analogy without bring Fred Phelps into the fold. That "person" is a complete embarassment to the great state of Kansas.

Even his daughter is starting to see the light!!

If this is true what you are stating, there may be an explanation of why it was allowed to happen. I looked and saw that Maur Hill does not have its own high school wrestling team. It is in a Co-Op situation with Atchison High School, which is a public school. From the wrestling picture on the Maur Hill wrestling page of their webpage, it looks like there are about six Maur Hill students who practice and wrestle with the Atchison HS team. The Bishop's directive would not apply to the Atchison HS public school team so perhaps this is why you saw Maur Hill students wrestling girls this year.

Yes they coop with A High, until regionals, then they become their own Maur Hill team. Since the boy was representing Maur Hill at regionals I would assume he would have to follow same rules as the KC boys.