High school sprinter stripped of state title after celebration is deemed unsportsmanlike

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North Salinas sophomore Clara Adams, center, wins a preliminary heat in the girls' 400 meters Friday at the CIF State Track & Field Championships in Clovis. She finished first in the finals the next day but was stripped of the title because of a celebration that was deemed by meet officials to be unsportsmanlike. (Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)
North Salinas High sophomore Clara Adams ran the fastest time in the girls' 400-meter finals at the CIF State Track & Field Finals last weekend.
She crossed the finish line .28 seconds ahead of her closest competitor.
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But Adams is not the state champion. She was stripped of that title after she used a fire extinguisher to spray her cleats while on the field inside the track moments after the race.
"I was robbed," Adams, 16, told The Times shortly after being disqualified from that event as well the 200 finals, which took place later in the meet.
Adams said CIF officials told her that she was being disqualified because she had been "unsportsmanlike," but that's not how she saw it at all.
"I was having fun," Adams said, noting her win in the 400 marked her first state title. "I'd never won something like that before, and they took it away from me. I didn't do anything wrong."
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She added: "I worked really hard for it and they took it from me, and I don't know what to do."
Days later, David Adams, who said he is the sprint coach at North Salinas, told The Times his daughter was "doing better" but still trying to cope with everything that unfolded Saturday afternoon at Buchanan High in Clovis.
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'Clara's hurt. She's hurt right now," David Adams said Wednesday. "She's better today than Saturday. Saturday was fresh. It just happened. It was a shock. She felt numb. They made her sit there and watch while they put those other girls on the podium, knowing Clara's the fastest 400-meter runner in the state of California.'
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Clara Adams has been running competitively since age 6, her father said. She finished fourth in the 400 at last year's state meet and won the event with a state-best time of 53.23 at the Central Coast Section championships last month. After posting the top qualifying time in Friday's preliminaries, Adams surged ahead of Madison Mosby of St. Mary's Academy in Inglewood to win the race with a time of 53.24.
Immediately afterward, Adams walked over to the wall in front of the stands and found her father, who reached down and handed her what he described as a "small" fire extinguisher. She then walked back across the track into the grass, where she sprayed her cleats as if she was putting out a fire — a move her father said was a tribute to former U.S. sprinter Maurice Greene, who similarly celebrated his win in the 100 at the 2004 Home Depot Invitational in Carson.
CIF officials apparently were not amused and disqualified Adams on the spot, awarding first place to Mosby. According to rules established by the National Federation of State High School Assns., "unsporting conduct" is defined as behavior that includes but is not limited to 'disrespectfully addressing an official, any flagrant behavior, intentional contact, taunting, criticizing or using profanity directed toward someone.' The penalty is disqualification from the event in which the behavior took place and further competition in the meet.
The CIF did not respond to a request for comment from The Times.
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According to David Adams, the officials 'were really nasty" toward his daughter. They "tugged on her arm," he said, "they were screaming in her face. I could hear it from where I was at. I could see it — I couldn't hear exactly what they were saying, but they were just really nasty."
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Clara Adams said she specifically asked the officials to speak with her father about the disqualification, but they refused.
"They kept telling me, 'It's OK,' and I was telling them, 'It's not OK,' and they didn't care," she said. "They were trying to smile in my face, like them telling me 'no' amused them or something."
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David Adams said the officials would only speak to North Salinas head coach Alan Green, who declined to speak to The Times for this story.
'They told him that it was unsportsmanlike conduct," David Adams said of the officials' discussion with Green. "We were asking for the rule, the specific rule of what she did, and they didn't really give anything. It was more of a gray area that gives them discretion to pick and choose what they feel is unsportsmanlike conduct."
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Adams disputes that his daughter behaved in a manner that could be considered unsportsmanlike.
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"Looking at the film, Clara is nowhere near any opponent," he said. "She's off the track, on the grass. Her opponents are long gone off the track already, so she wasn't in their face. It was a father-daughter moment. ... She did it off the track because she didn't want to seem disrespectful toward nobody. And they still found a reason to take her title away. They didn't give her a warning or anything.'
He added that his daughter is a "very humble, really sweet kid."
"I take responsibility for the situation. I'm taking full responsibility," he said. "Clara has run several championship races and won and walked off the track. It's just weird that she celebrates one time and now people, these strangers, these middle-aged people want to chase after her character?"
Greene, the four-time Olympic medalist who inspired Clara's celebration, told KSBW-TV in Salinas that the CIF should reconsider its decision.
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"If [the celebration] was away from everyone and not interfering with anyone, I would say reinstate her," Greene said.
David Adams said he is trying to make that happen but so far the CIF won't return his calls .
'We have an attorney on standby right now," he said. "I don't want to take it there, but I will fight this all the way. As long as I'm breathing I'm gonna fight it. But we're trying to go through proper channels to give the CIF an opportunity to do the right thing. Having an attorney involved is our last resort, that means we tried everything.'
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.