Legislators to prep league: Change rules or else

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The South Car­olina High School League could decide its own fate this week­end at its annual con­fer­ence when mem­bers vote on whether to estab­lish a more open appeals process and pun­ish­ment sys­tem, leg­is­la­tors said Wednesday.

The warn­ing came as a Sen­ate panel took tes­ti­mony on a bill that would elim­i­nate the inde­pen­dent, dues-paying orga­ni­za­tion that gov­erns mid­dle and high school sports. The mea­sure trans­fers the league’s respon­si­bil­i­ties to the state Edu­ca­tion Depart­ment, under an ath­letic com­mis­sioner ap-pointed by the state superintendent.

The 99-year-old league is made up of more than 200 mem­ber schools that set their com­pe­ti­tion rules. Under the bill, rules would instead be approved by the Leg­is­la­ture and appeals would go before the Admin­is­tra­tive Law Court.

“Right now, they’re oper­ated by an entity that’s unac­count­able to elected offi­cials,” said Sen. Chip Campsen, R-Isle of Palms, the bill’s main Sen­ate sponsor.

Leg­is­la­tors have long com­plained about the league and their inabil­ity to have any say over deci­sions involv­ing con­stituents. But league deci­sions that knocked defend­ing state foot­ball cham­pi­ons Goose Creek out of the play­offs last Novem­ber prompted bills to get rid of it.

“It was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Rep. Joe Dan­ing, R-Goose Creek, the bill’s main House spon­sor. “Almost every year you hear some­thing about the league — that we need to do some­thing — but that was the end of it.”

The league’s exec­u­tive com­mit­tee twice ruled Goose Creek High School, which is actu­ally out­side Daning’s dis­trict, had to for­feit all 10 games in which an inel­i­gi­ble player dressed to play. The sec­ond deci­sion fol­lowed a cir­cuit court judge order­ing the league to reconsider.

Goose Creek coach Chuck Reedy tes­ti­fied he alerted the league, amid the play­offs, to a pos­si­ble mis­take in allow­ing a spe­cial edu­ca­tion stu­dent to play in five games when the team was ahead by at least 41 points.

“This was a young man who had no impact what­so­ever in terms of advan­tage of any type. We assumed we’d be treated fairly, and we were given the death penalty,” Reedy said. “I begged them for mercy. I said, ‘Fire me. Penal­ize me. Do any­thing you want to do to me, but do not penal­ize these young men.’ … And we got a deaf ear.”

League direc­tor Jerome Sin­gle­ton called the “death penalty” term a mis­char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, say­ing the lowest-level penalty was applied accord­ing to the rules over inel­i­gi­ble play­ers in a fifth year of high school.

Sen­a­tors said they’re watch­ing to see how schools’ rep­re­sen­ta­tives vote on pro­pos­als that pro­vide an appeals process and tiered set of pun­ish­ments. The league’s annual con­fer­ence is Sat­ur­day in Charleston.

Some sen­a­tors wanted to advance the bill to send a mes­sage. But the panel’s chair­man, Sen. Wes Hayes, said that’s not necessary.

“If they don’t, they give us the mes­sage that somebody’s not lis­ten­ing,” said Hayes, R-Rock Hill.

Posted by Jon Kleinknecht on Mar 8 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.