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Somewhere six feet under ground all our ancestors are collectively weeping as news recently broke of a St. Louis, Missouri mother who filed a federal lawsuit after her son didn’t make the Varsity soccer team.
The mother of the Ladue High School student, named John Doe in legal documents, is griping over the athletic structure school has implemented. According to Fox St. Louis, Ladue school officials said if a junior does not make the varsity team, the student cannot play on the junior varsity team, a mechanism used to allow younger students to develop their skills.
The student has already played on the JV team during his sophomore year but was cut from Varsity his junior year, and his mother’s attorney is now claiming the school is imposing age and sex discrimination because the rules are different for the girls’ team.
The family of the student appealed the coach’s ruling to the superintendent who basically told them to piss off, saying the boy is underdeveloped in his “technical ability and game decision making.” U.S. District Judge John Ross also told the family to kick dust, as he denied a request to allow their child to play soccer on the JV team.
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The lawyer for John Doe showed the court performance ratings documents provided by the Varsity coach that indicates he is better than some of the players who made the Varsity team. The coach retorted that the only reason he gave good performance ratings to John Doe was not to hurt his feelings after he cut him.
I cannot conceive a more humiliating scenario during my formative years than to have my mother intervene to the highest extent of the law to try to get my shitty-soccer-playing-ass on a sports team. The only thing I can think of that would be more humiliating would be riding the bench on JV as a junior.
Pro Tip, kiddo: All of us will reach the humbling realization that we don’t possess the physical tools to continue our athletic careers. For some it happens sooner than others. In all cases, moms have no place in coming to the painful understanding. Wipe the tears away and take up fencing.
[h/t Fox St. Louis]