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Girls’ Basketball Team Punished For Wearing Pink To Promote Breast Cancer Awareness

Many of us have paid a price for our fashion decisions: skinned knees from when we fell in shoes that we shouldn’t have worn out while drinking, freezing in a skirt that we just had to wear when it was only 18 degrees out, a nip slip in a low-cut tank when we were sure we could forgo the fashion tape. But for one high school basketball team in California, their fashion choice is costing them in a big way.

The Narbonne High School girls’ basketball team chose to change the letters and numbers on their jerseys to pink in an effort to demonstrate their support of The Women’s Basketball Coaches Association’s Play 4 Kay event, a fundraiser for the Kay Yow Cancer Fund for Breast Cancer Research, which is held every February. However, the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) didn’t see this as an altruistic deed; instead, the federation saw it as a violation of a rule that states a team’s uniform colors must be a combination of the school’s official school colors. As such, the CIF has forced Narbonne to forfeit its win in the semifinals of the L.A. City Section Girls Basketball Open Division, removed the team from that tournament, and banned it from participating in the upcoming CIF state playoffs.

Even more baffling than a team being punished for a good deed? The fact that the pink-numbered jerseys were worn in a game earlier in February with no complaints. Chris Cuaron, the parent of one of the players, told The Daily Breeze, “I was outraged when I heard the news. As I got a chance to read the rule I understood what it said, but what angered me even more is they allowed the girls to play in those uniforms in the first game. The officials had the opportunity to say, ‘Hey, you guys can’t wear that’ and they never did.”

According to the team’s coach, Victoria Sanders, Narbonne tried to discuss the situation with CIF, but to no avail. While I understand that the team technically broke a rule, does the punishment here really fit the crime? It would seem to me that the penalty is pretty extreme for a group of girls who were just trying to bring attention to an important cause.

[via The Daily Breeze]

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Jenna Crowley

Jenna used to be known as 2NOTBrokeGirls, but then one of the girls actually went broke, so she's struck out on her own. Jenna spends her free time saving the world, one sorority girl at a time (usually while wearing yoga pants), questioning why she decided to get a doctorate, and documenting her love of all things cheese related. You can ask her anything you want about football, using your boobs to get what you want, and pizza at @JennaLCrowley on Twitter or via email at [email protected].

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