Their pink uniforms were meant to show support for breast cancer awareness. Bad call, tourney enforcers.
A group of teenage basketball players thought they were instilling goodwill into the community when they decided to wear special pink accented uniforms in support of breast cancer awareness to a couple of their playoff games. The Narbonne High Gauchos in Harbor City, CA were instead slapped with a disqualification and bounced from the rest of post season on Monday for breaking a rule that prohibits teams from wearing any uniform colors but their official ones.
Image by Steve Snodgrass via Creative Commons
“Breast cancer awareness is in October, and there’s a process for people to request color change,” City Section commissioner (and apparent breast cancer awareness calendar stickler) John Aguirre told the LA Times. “If they’re [the administration] going to blatantly disregard these rules and regulations, they’re going to affect kids.”
In fact, it was Aguirre who was affecting these kids, who after getting super excited to make it to the championship game (seriously, think about what a big deal this is for a teenager) were told their entire season was getting nullified on account of … breast cancer awareness.
Both the team coach and school principal denied having any knowledge of the rule beforehand. Luckily, the community, both local and virtual, rallied around the girls, prompting the City Section to overturn its original ruling today.
There is one caveat, however. The girls’ basketball coach, Victoria Sanders, will not be permitted to return for this weekend’s championship game. Additionally, Narbonne High will be placed on probation next season.
“To be stripped of our rights because we believe in something is totally just devastating,” Narbonne senior Latisha Smith told CBSLA.
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