NCHSAA board to consider new financial allocations, ejection policy at meeting
The N.C. High School Athletic Association will hold its annual spring meetings this week and the agenda will be heavy.
It’ll be the first official meeting since the association entered into a memorandum of understanding with the N.C. State Board of Education about a month ago, after state legislators called for more transparency within the organization.
The meeting will begin Tuesday with voting to occur on Wednesday. NCHSAA spokesperson James Alverson said the association will host a news conference with the media to answer questions, which will also be Wednesday.
Here are a few important items of discussion:
▪ The Policy Committee will discuss a proposal from Mountain Island Charter to revisit the NCHSAA’s policies around fighting and playoff opportunities.
Currently, if a team has three or more individuals ejected from a game for fighting, or has six or more individual ejections in a season, that team is ineligible for the playoffs. Mountain Island Charter, for example, won nine games and would’ve qualified for postseason play, but the Raptors were banned from the playoffs following a fight that broke out during a game with Winston-Salem Carver in Week 10.
The same rule cost Anson County in 2019, and the NCHSAA’s ruling in that case ultimately led to state legislator action in the form of House Bill 91, which called for an overhaul to how high school athletics were administered in state and threatened to end the NCHSAA before the agreement was reached with lawmakers and the State Board.
Mountain Island Charter coach Robert Washington said the school made the proposal about a month ago.
“The only thing we could do was try to make change,” Washington said. “I don’t think that innocent kids should be punished for the actions of several other kids. You’re talking about seniors who missed the whole playoffs their senior years because of others actions.”
Washington said the proposal calls for the multiple players to miss the playoffs and the coach to miss the next game.
The new proposal would punish individuals for fighting but not the entire team, even in a multi-player incident. The Policy Committee will consider the proposal and it could go to the board for a vote Wednesday.
▪ The Finance Committee is expected to discuss a proposal to increase the amount of monies the NCHSAA distributes from its endowment to member schools as well a recommendation to set school membership dues at $1 per student, $100 for school administration fees and $25 for each cheerleader registration.
▪ The Policy Committee will also discuss the NCHSAA’s Name, Image and Likeness policy. Currently, the NCHSAA does not allow its student-athletes to accept money or free gifts beyond athletic honors, like a player of the week award that doesn’t exceed $250 per player per season. Meanwhile, nationally, some high school athletes are making five and sometimes six figures a year monetizing social media or partnering with local businesses.
▪ The committee will also review the NCHSAA’s gender policy that was changed two years ago. It currently says a student may participate based on the gender noted on the birth certificate. Girls are allowed to play on boys teams if the school does not field a team in that sport. But if an athlete identifies as a different gender than the birth certificate indicates, the NCHSAA has a gender request form and a special committee to review each case.
▪ The NCHSAA’s Review & Officiating committee also will be busy Tuesday. Among its considerations are a proposal from tennis coaches to do a pilot program to allow all tennis teams in the state into the dual team playoffs, adding women’s wrestling as a sanctioned sport and adding a 4A class for girls lacrosse.
In addition, a proposal will be considered to allow a five-quarter rule for basketball that was tabled from the winter meeting. The new rule would allow a player to play five quarters in one day on junior varsity and varsity.
This story was originally published April 24, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
