Hurd By The Bay

Nice to see that while I was buried in the boxes of a move, a few things occurred last week that provided faith that perhaps the apocalypse might not be on us. The one that stood out to me:

The acquittal in Louisville, Ky., of high school football coach David Jason Stinson, who had been charged in connection with the death of 15-year-old Max Gilpin from heat stroke in 2008.

We live in a world where high school coaches face more parent interference and less support from their school districts than ever before. To send a message that they can be sued for tragedies that occur in a game or in practice would only add more fuel to the arguments that we're too litigious a people already. Nice to know that some tragedies remain only that ---- tragedies with no explanation and no adequate way to fill in the void created by the pain of them. Much sympathy to Gilpin's family, whose pain must be more than I can imagine, but suing somebody isn't going to make it go away.

Having said that, can we all agree that kids who need an extra drink of water during a hot practice aren't weak? Bodies cry out for what they need. I've never quite seen the benefit of having that body pushed to the edge of collapse. If coaches do practice what they preach, they'll take this lesson and apply it going forward.

By the way, the high school kids in the school district where I live have had to pay $400 to pay football this fall. Yeah, nothing about the way our country and states (in this case, California) do things needs to be changed.