Controversy Erupts After Basketball Team Banned From Finals Over Female Teammate

[KamaAina]

https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/controversy-erupts-after-basketball-team-banned-125780686722.html

A Virginia youth basketball team was disqualified Saturday from the National Travel Basketball Association’s (NTBA) national championship tournament in Myrtle Beach, S.C., for having a female player — despite the fact that she’s been on the team for three years.

Ten-year-old Kymora Johnson has been playing with the Charlottesville Cavaliers under-11 team since she was 6 years old. “She’s played in hundreds of tournaments and two prior NTBA national championship tournaments on this team,” Jessica Thomas-Johnson, Kymora’s mother, tells Yahoo Parenting. But after winning their fifth game, the team was told they couldn’t continue on in Sunday’s tournament because they had broken the rules.

“About 15 minutes after the game ended, our coach was pulled aside,” Thomas-Johnson says. “(He came back and told us) that we were disqualified and couldn’t proceed because we have a girl on the team.” Thomas-Johnson says NTBA president John Whitley told her and the coach that someone had sent the organization a photo of Kymora playing at the tournament and complained.

The NTBA’s regulations do state that a girl can play on a boys’ team at certain tournaments with a waiver from the organization. However, the regulations also state that this doesn’t apply to the national championship tournament, because the NTBA offers the tournament for both boys’ and girls’ teams.

[Cracklin Charlie]

1. She must be good!

Go, Kymora!

[Angry Dragon]

2. stupid people

[KamaAina]

3. Feminist and women's hoops fan Rita Mae Brown lives outside Charlottesville

She cannot be happy about this. One would hope for a thundering yet hilarious letter to the local paper.

[ProfessorGAC]

4. This Is A Head Scratcher

What competitive advantage is served by having a girl on a boys team, unless she happens to be really good at basketball? In the latter case, her gender is irrelevant. She's on the team because she can play.

If she wasn't good, it would be a disadvantage to have her, or anybody else who isn't good enough, on the team.

So, what's the problem?

[KamaAina]

5. Beats me.

[mythology]

6. My guess is more that it's to prevent the opposite as they have a tournament for both

boys and girls. I.E. no having a nominally girls' team that has some ringer guys on it (as much as any 11 year old can be considered a ringer).

[hughee99]

7. The problem doesn't seem to be a competitive advantage issue, it's a "rules" issue.

It seems like no one gave a shit that she was playing, but there is a rule somewhere in their rule book that says she can't play on a boys team in this tournament. Until now, no one said anything, probably because the weren't aware of the rule, or just thought it was a stupid rule to begin with (I think it's a stupid rule as well, since it doesn't seem to provide a competitive advantage). The problem is that the rule does exist and once some asshole pointed it out (probably some parent or coach from a team they beat, or a team that doesn't want to face them in the finals), what are they supposed to do, ignore the stupid rule? The rule shouldn't have been there in the first place, but it is there.

The problem they have is that she registered for the tournament, they saw her birth certificate, knew that she was a girl and that she was not eligible and let her play anyway. Then, after the fact, disqualified her team. The officials at check-in dropped the ball and now the league is trying to cover their ass. If the team had showed up with an ineligible 12 year old boy, you bet your ass they would have said something at registration time BEFORE they played the first game. The league fucked up, and shouldn't punish the team for that. At WORST, they should let the team continue on without the girl and dump the stupid rule for the next tournament. What they SHOULD do is announce that they fucked up, give the girl a waiver to make up for it, let them all continue in this tournament, and dump the stupid rule for the next tournament.