The Mom of the "other" student athlete whose high school sports career was jeopardized by the shameful behavior of the Appleton Post Crescent and the inane rules of the WIAA eamiled me this morning. She wishes to remain anonymous, but I wanted to share her letter with you. If you're not aware of the story, here it is. 

Good morning!

I am the mother of the other athlete pictured on the billboard put up by The Post-Crescent and about which Phil Scholl called your show the other day. I can’t thank you enough for intervening on behalf of the girls to shed light on what could have been a devastating outcome for both athletes. My daughter is a senior in high school, which means we are in the process of deciding which college she’ll be attending next year. To have been declared ineligible to participate in track this year because of this incident could have greatly jeopardized her plans to do so in college.

We, too, had seen the billboard and the bus ads starting in July, but had never contacted the Post-Crescent about it because I naively believed that they would never have done such a thing if they didn’t legally have the right to use our daughter’s photo as they wished, or if they had any inkling that this was a violation of WIAA rules. It was only after attending the Neenah High School’s code of conduct meeting on September 5 that I became aware of how strict the WIAA was about these things, and brought the situation to the attention of the school’s activities director, who then contacted the WIAA.

Going into this, I felt strongly that we were in the right and that no harm would come to our daughter’s athletic career. I now know that, even though that is still true, the situation could have turned out much differently if you and your staff had not intervened and “rattled some cages” at the P-C and WIAA. What I find most ironic about all of this is that the Post-Crescent is getting way more attention for that billboard from the efforts to remove it than they ever did for putting it up!

Thank you for taking the time and effort to speak for the innocent and helping to force people who should have known better to finally do the right thing.