Bad call robbed a Charlotte school of a track title. NC officials should fix it
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Mallard Creek lost a state championship when Nyan Brown was DQed for a mild celebration.
- The DQ was upheld after a protest, and Durham Jordan was announced as the 8A meet winner.
- The writer urges NCHSAA to reverse call, declare Mallard Creek and Jordan co-champions.
Mallard Creek was robbed of a high school state track championship Saturday in Greensboro by a poor officiating call, in a decision that could and should be overturned by the North Carolina High School Athletic Association.
With a couple of seconds left in the 4x400 relay, Mallard Creek star Nyan Brown had pulled well ahead of the field on the anchor leg. His impending victory would erase the two-point edge in total points in the 8A standings held by Durham Jordan, allowing Mallard Creek’s boys team to win its third consecutive NCHSAA state championship.
And then Brown raised his left hand in the air just before he crossed the finish line. That’s it.
Runners behind him — if they were looking up, which is somewhat doubtful — might have seen the back of his hand. Maybe.
Immediately, Brown was disqualified from the race by a track official, who was standing at the finish line and told him that it was against the rules to celebrate while the race was going on.
Immediately, the 10 points Mallard Creek would have received for a first-place finish was changed to zero points, meaning Jordan won the title.
And immediately, a controversy began.
That was unsportsmanlike conduct? Seriously?
“Nyan is devastated,” Bryant Bailey, the Mallard Creek athletic director, said Sunday. “He’s very upset, as are we. With the state championship on the line, they decided to make that call and DQ him. And if you go back and look at other photos and videos throughout the week, you can see multiple instances of kids celebrating way, way harder while coming across the line than what I think our young man did. If you’re going to make that call, make it all week long, and not on the last event on the last day of a state meet.”
Mallard Creek filed an official protest, but the call was quickly upheld. Jordan was announced as the meet winner, with the Mallard Creek boys second (the Mallard Creek girls team won a separate state title).
Is there any room for another look at the call?
“Obviously, we want to win,” Bailey said. “But because of the way it all has transpired, the official has a last say. In addition, they’ve already given the trophies and everything to Jordan. So essentially, it can’t be overturned.”
That’s wrong.
Brown’s mild celebration wouldn’t have drawn a flag in the NFL or a technical in the NBA. I’ve been to hundreds of high school sporting events and seen “worse” in almost every one of them. This wasn’t a throat-slash, a baton-spike, a shove, a verbal taunt or any of the other dozen things you could easily name that might warrant a DQ.
No, it was a raised hand.
And that is technically against the antiquated rules of high school track and field, even though Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt’s post-race (and sometimes in-race) joyous celebrations remain a gold standard in the sport.
Yes, I understand Brown — an N.C. State signee with a 3.6 GPA and an All-American caliber track star who runs with his glasses on — had been warned by a track official after setting a state record and winning the 300-meter hurdles earlier Saturday in Greensboro. “That record had stood for about 20 years,” Bailey said. “And he didn’t taunt anybody. He just was happy.”
I watched that celebration on video, too, and it was as tame as a baby goat at a petting zoo. Brown flexed a little, facing away from his competitors, yelled in jubilation and slapped hands with a teammate.
That drew a warning? Yes, it did.
And then, Bailey said, an official did warn all the teams en masse before the 4x400 not to celebrate prematurely.
So I suppose Brown was on double-secret probation when he ran the anchor leg of Mallard Creek’s relay, and so some track official decided to insert herself into the event.
The video of the event had already been viewed more than six million times on various platforms as of Sunday afternoon, as people tried to figure out what Brown had done that would warrant a DQ.
I tried to contact NCHSAA officials Sunday, but those messages weren’t immediately returned.
So what should the NCHSAA do?
It’s simple. You don’t take away Jordan’s championship, because Jordan did nothing wrong. You just make the two teams co-champions. Give them both a trophy.
I’ve seen this happen before, in a different sport but still under the NCHSAA umbrella, when there was a controversy due to some scoring rules not being fully explained. Both teams ended up sharing the title. Both went home relatively happy.
So let Jordan and Mallard Creek share the boys title. Let them both buy their players championship rings if they’d like.
But don’t take away a state championship for something as mild as raising your hand when you’re crossing the finish line after winning one of the biggest races of your life.
It just makes both the sport and the NCHSAA look out of touch.
There are rules, sure. There is also common sense.
For once, can’t common sense prevail?
