Legal question

[EIUvltr]

I coach at a high school with rather poor equipment. We have already had 4 or 5 kids get injured this year whether it be from standards falling on their heads, or just spraining their ankles in the decrepit pits. The athletic trainer informed me that even though we have told the AD we need new equipment numerous times, I am still liable if someone gets hurt, ESPECIALLY since I have stated that they are unsafe to jump on in the past. What is my move here? We have a lot of fanatical parents who would sue at the drop of the hat, some who have already sued the school before. Should I just leave? If I leave the kids are more likely to get hurt since they will have no coach at all. When becoming indifferent to the safety of children is your only legal recourse, something is definitely wrong with your society.

[rainbowgirl28]

Usually schools have some kind of insurance policy that offers some kind of liability insurance for coaches when they are coaching students at the school during school practice. Check with the AD and ask to see a copy of their policy.

[KirkB]

... the athletic trainer informed me that even though we have told the AD we need new equipment numerous times, I am still liable if someone gets hurt, ...

With all due respect to the athlectic trainer, you're getting your legal advice second hand ... and from a non-qualified source. RG is right ... ASK for written proof that you're liable ... which your AD is unlikely to give you.

Put the onus on HIM ... and the school ... assuming that's how a lawsuit will come down. With this type of pressure, he may see the light to improve the safety of the equipment. At the very least, you're covering your a$$.

BTW, this includes poles. In another thread, I recall that you complained about the lack of pole selection. Vaulting on the wrong pole can cause a vaulter to stall out, or shoot over the pit ... or off to the side. You do have a responsibility as a coach to advise re pole selection and grip ... but it goes all the way up the ladder too ... to the head coach and AD who refused to get new equip (get him/them to say this in an email, then save it ... just in case) ... to the school that refused to fund the program properly.

Keep badgering the school officials until things improve.

And BTW, don't scream at them ... school officials are people too! Maybe you need to take a remedial course in sports psychology ... or something like that ... to learn how to deal with people better.

Kirk

[rainbowgirl28]

Well liability insurance wouldn't protect you from gross negligence, but I doubt you need to worry about that. You _could_ get sued if someone got hurt, but they know you don't have any money, so they would also go after the school and the district. Unless you told a kid to do something really stupid (like PV on HJ mats), it's not really anything you need to be losing sleep over. But it is a good conversation to have with the AD because it might help him realize they need better equipment.

[drcurran]

Just throw this out for consideration. Once you have brought the unsafe condition to the attention of your AD, you have shown that you know it is unsafe. In front of the judge some lawyer is going to ask "you knew this was unsafe and you still continued to use the equipment?" You are between a rock and a hard place if you complain enough the school might take the easy way out and not contest the pole vault. OK that my .02 Wish I had an easy fix!

Dan

[vaultmd]

Dan hit the nail of your problem squarely on the head.

[Vaultref]

Coach "EIUvltr" ... I tried to send this as a PM, but the "system" crashed three times now... so I had to post instead.

Can't offer any suggestions to fixing your pit other than to buy another one.

However, standards falling inward on to the vaulters is pretty serious and you need to fix that ASAP.
NFHS addressed this back in 1995/1996.

You can do several things.
1) bolt the standard bases to the surface.. it usually takes four on each base.
2) you can go out an buy these tough rubber badders and fill them with water (or sand) and use four of them to add weight to end of your standards base rails.
or
3) make a mid-night requestion in your schools weight room and snatch up four 25lb or 50lb
weights and put one on each end of the base rails.

You do any of the above three... it would take a tractor pull to yank those standards over.

good hunting.

[superpipe]

I personally find it absolutely inexcusable not have standards bolted down into cement. Not only is this the only way to insure calibrated standard placement, but it's the only way it's 100% safe. It takes a solid day to do this, but once you take the time to insure they are placed correctly, you have perfectly calibrated standards the rest of your life. Seems like an obvious decision to me. It's really nice to know when you set the standards at 28", they are at a true 28".

At a minimum you should bolt, not screw, the standards to a 4'x8' sheet of 3/4" plywood and slide the long side under the pits to keep them form tipping.

Adding weights or sand bags on the bases takes way less than a "tractor pull" to tip the standards over. Standards are very long. It's all about leverage. Plus, every time you need to set the standards, you need to take off the weights.

I think they need to modify the NFHS rules to require standard bases to be permanently installed. This would solve all the uncalibrated standard placement issues that exist at most high schools and make standards 100% more safe than probably 95% of all setups that exist around the country.

[Vaultref]

At a minimum you should bolt, not screw, the standards to a 4'x8' sheet of 3/4" plywood and slide the long side under the pits to keep them form tipping..

While this is a workable solution, I'd sure hate to be on the crew that had to change the direction of jumping using this method.

Adding weights or sand bags on the bases takes way less than a "tractor pull" to tip the standards over. Standards are very long. It's all about leverage. Plus, every time you need to set the standards, you need to take off the weights.

I disagree.. we've been using weighted items as far back as 1996... they are not falling over into the pits. I doubt they would even with the added leverage of a 6.15m jump. The time needed to move any such added base weight when making a measurement or moving standards to another jumping direction is seconds.

[rainbowgirl28]

Vaultref, few HS facilities have the ability to change direction for the wind!

[bayouvaulter]

With a ratchet and socket it also only thats a couple of minutes to unscrew the bolts that
secure the standards into the cement. Our school had purchased a set of standards from Earl Bells a few years back that were built by his brother-in-law and the base almost takes 2 people to move. With the bungy at 17 ft. the standards do not move a bit when the bungy is brought all the way down to the mat. I think they should require the manufacture to make the bases meet a certain weight, just like the poles and vaulters. Heck they even tell use how much tape we can put on a pole!! So why not make the manufactures make save standards. Alot of the high schools in our area the mats are set on a grass area so a set up like Earls would be ideal.
I'm not sure if Earl still has these available but these standards stay out year round and
are still in great shape, even made it through 3 hurricanes and one twister!

[crayford]

At one of the places we vault against during the season the standards frequently fall, so they put some cement bricks on the bases; only problem was that they didn't have anything covering them.

The same school also had extremely small pits, maybe 3 feet sideways and back from the coach's box and MAYBE 2 feet tall. They are easily the smallest pits I have ever seen and I was a little afraid to jump on them (especially since they wouldn't move the pits from headwind to tail wind, even when we offered to do it for them\ opposing school!).