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I was hoping to get some opinions on a situation that has come up in our area regarding the scoring of a league meet. Today I was informed that our league meet(thats in less than two weeks away) is scoring the pole vault and only the pole vault differently than the past. Because there are only 4 and sometimes 5 of the 8 schools that offer pole vault in our area, the powers that be, decided that it would be only fair to award half the points of 10 (5) for the first place finisher, 4 for second and so on. I will say that we have had a good vault program for some time and have taken advantage of this in regards to points. The idea of course was implemented by someone who is from the area that doesn't have the vault. Any thoughts?

This is preposterous of course.

If the schools decide not to enter an athlete in an event, that should not penalize the schools who did.
If this were the case, then it would be in the best interest of every school who does not have a chance to win points in a particular event ... to NOT enter anyone in that event and the request that the event NOT be given the full points because not every school was entered.

Of course, if all the schools involved in your league have met and approved this type of scoring ... it is what it is.
The only recourse you might have is if your league was a member of a larger organization such as a State HSAA or a national HSAA. Then they could be in violation of not following the larger organizations rules for scoring HS events and face the possiblity of loosing their membership or accreditation.

I think that this is especially unfair given that most polevaulters are limited to one event because it doesn't relate to other events the way throws or running events do, making the athletes more likely to only gain points in the vault. And I agree that schools who have athletes registered for events should not be penalized for training their athletes in the vault. That's a shame.

That's an incorrect procedure.

The only time points are split is when the venue is unserviceable or unsafe, and points are split among participating schools but not the host since it is their fault in the first place.