GHSA adds football spring games, slow-pitch softball
The GHSA spring sports plate is already full, but it was added to a little bit Monday at the GHSA's executive committee meeting.
Football teams can now have a spring game, and slow-pitch softball will return to the schedule. Those were among the items voted on during a pretty routine spring meeting at the Marriott City Center.
The association also dealt with some serious issues involving the state Legislature, while retaining a format in the softball tournament and changing the golf format. There was a fair amount of discussion regarding a proposal to change the softball tournament's later rounds from the Elite Eight in Columbus to just the Final Four. Assorted concerns on both sides focused on the potential of missed school days because of weather, expenses, lodging, logistics, the additional classification and the prestige of "making it to Columbus."
By the time a vote was called, the "tournament atmosphere event" for championship softball, as associate director Ernie Yarbrough termed it, won out, and the proposal failed 33-24.
The proposal to resume slow-pitch softball as a spring sport passed 34-24. A GHSA survey that showed 50 schools were interested. One speaker noted that slow-pitch was desired by junior colleges for a recruiting advantage otherwise unavailable, but interest in fast-pitch accelerated upon its debut in all classes in 2002. The last slow-pitch champion was crowned in 2003 when the GHSA had two titleholders, one for the top two classes and one for the three smallest. The sport was completely discontinued in 2009 after five years as an open event.
Gender equity and avoiding attention from the Office of Civil Rights were part of the discussion, as was the possibility of adding other sports and activities, including girls wrestling. Executive director Gary Phillips said the survey asked schools for what sports they were interested in to maintain gender equity balance and said the association wasn’t done with the topic of adding opportunities for girls.
“We’re going to be back,” he said. “We have to do something. You have to do something about this gender disparity. Let me tell you what I told the superintendents’ association and the principals’ association and athletic directors, ‘This is not a GHSA issue. They’re not gonna come get me. They’re gonna come get you, because it’s a school problem.’ ”
The vote for allowing a spring football game was by a roll call and passed with little discussion. That will start in the spring of 2017.
The state Legislature was a topic of humor and consternation with the committee, GHSA legislative liaison Skip Yow and association attorney Alan Connell. A bill, SB 309, on the desk of Gov. Nathan Deal that was passed during the legislative session involved messages on uniforms and competition with non-member schools.
Yow was critical of the media’s coverage of a cross country runner from West Forsyth in last fall’s Class AAAAAA championship and his disqualification for wearing a headband with a message on it. Coverage centered on the fact that it was a religious message and left an impression that it was the reason for the disqualification.
Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle released a statement that focused on the religious aspect of the disqualification and said the GHSA was executing religious discrimination.
“The lieutenant governor got involved in this bill,” Yow said. “The misunderstanding, which was our wonderful media ... the only way they could play it up was the religious statement ...”
National Federation of High Schools uniform rules, which the GHSA uses, don’t specify anything about the type of message on a uniform. All are disallowed. The committee voted to follow Georgia law and then NFHS rules.
The GHSA already had decided to allow full play with the GISA, doing so in 2014 in sports that didn’t include a power-rating system (football, basketball, baseball and softball). In February, the GHSA’s Board of Trustees voted to allow fulll competition with the GISA and GICAA.
Nevertheless, SB 309 includes wording that schools receiving state funding “cannot participate in an athletic association which prohibits member schools from (competing) with nonmember schools.”
Cagle addressed that in his statement, as well, albeit inaccurately. Connell mused at the conflict regarding competition between associations.
“We had these two bills at once,” Connell said. “One’s a bill (that) required us to play private schools that weren’t members of the association. There was another bill that required us not to let our programs play (non-members). The Senate had one understanding of 309, the House had another, and we couldn’t find out exactly what they wanted us to do.”
Both Yow and Cannell several times encouraged committee members to contact their legislators and establish communication regarding those two topics in particular as well as a general rapport regarding the GHSA, as did executive committee member Jesse Crews.
“We’re not doing a lot of bad stuff,” Crews said. “We do a lot of good stuff, I think. ... When they hear something bad, here they come. They need to hear the good things we do.”
The board of trustees received information on a proposal by Region 4-A to increase the number of Class A playoff teams in power-ranked sports from 24 to 32, and no vote was taken. The GHSA upped the number from 16 to 24 in Class A after adding the seventh classification, so Class A hasn’t even had a year yet with a 24-team playoff.
In other matters, the executive committee or Board of Trustees:
• voted to expand the golf tournaments to 36 holes. Golf chairman Dave Hunter noted that national ranking services only use 36-hole tournament in their equation;
• tabled for further discussion a proposal that no school can employ a community coach “for an activity who coached a non-GHSA team in that same activity within the past 12 months if any of the GHSA school’s players participated on the non-GHSA team;”
• approved eligibility rules regarding court orders, physical and legal custody and bona fide moves;
• declined to combine classifications in soccer to hold six championships instead of seven.
The executive committee bid farewell to longtime members Wayne Tootle and Dave Hunter, and Phillips said Mercer cheerleading coach Penny Pitts, the daughter of former Mary Persons football head coach Dan Pitts, soon will join the GHSA staff.
This story was originally published April 18, 2016 at 7:10 PM with the headline "GHSA adds football spring games, slow-pitch softball ."