Pride before a fall

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/07/2007 (6736 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An irate letter writer Friday complained that she’s tired of the Pasternak hockey controversy. “Please, no more,” she wrote, saying she’s sick of the saga of the twin “princesses” who filed a human rights complaint against the Manitoba High School Athletics Association and won. The writer is entitled to her opinion — it was published, after all. But her irritation would be better directed at MHSAA, which refuses to accept that, where girls playing boys’ hockey is concerned, the game is over, the score one to zip. The human rights ruling was clear — the association’s rule that girls could not try out for boys’ teams was discriminatory, among a host of other odd and contradictory findings.

Why exactly the association continues to insist that it will appeal the ruling — that this lost game go into overtime — is unclear. Although Amy and Jesse Pasternak won the right to try out for a boys’ team, they failed to make the cut and there are no other girls demanding tryouts. The association says it fears repercussions in other high school sports that it oversees, and perhaps there will be. But why try to turn the clock back for fear of the future? Why make a mountain out of what has been a mole hill?

In fact, the more the association demands a re-match, the less deserving its case appears. On the one hand it allowed the twins to try out in line with the ruling. But having done so, it tried to reimpose the rule it had just lifted, which outraged high school superintendents, who are asking good questions about the inconsistency of MHSAA policies and about MHSAA chutzpah. Meanwhile, Sport Manitoba has noticed that an awful lot of money intended for sports programs is going into the pockets of lawyers.

As with the irate writer, the MHSAA should realize this is about principles, not the Pasternaks.