This is one of those examples where Voltaire was correct: "Common sense is not so common."
The cross-country team at McCallie School in Chattanooga would have been a high school powerhouse, maybe even a state champion, if four of the Blue Tornado's top runners hadn't been ineligible. The banned athletes all have the same problem. You guessed it: It's their grades.
They're too good.
The four runners—senior Tyler Richard, juniors David McCandless and Ryan Schumacher, and sophomore Gil Walton—have report cards with more A's than the first page of the phone book. They're all members of the school's Honors Scholar program, in which they have grade-point averages near 4.0 or above. That's the kind of academic performance that earned them full merit scholarships to McCallie, an all-boys private school at which the tuition for boarding students, as those four are, is $36,850. But under the rules of the state's athletic association, students who receive any subsidies other than need-based financial aid are ineligible to compete in varsity sports. [read more]
Could this be a metaphor for our nation? Merit is punishable by banishment.
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