Why big changes could be coming with how high school sports are managed in SC

Growing concerns surrounding the equality and fairness in athletics between traditional and non-traditional public schools in South Carolina are driving state legislators into action. Their efforts could change the way high school sports are governed in the Palmetto State.

The state House Education and Public Works Ad Hoc Committee on high school athletics met for the first time Monday to discuss several topics, including the hot topic of competitive balance and fair play — but also how sports should be managed in an era when education options are evolving.

The S.C. High School League — a public entity but not a state agency — has managed athletics here for more than 100 years.

“We’ve got to restructure. I hope everybody’s at the table to do that,” state Rep. Shannon Erickson, chairwoman of the House Education and Public Works Committee, told reporters after Monday’s meeting.

League commissioner Jerome Singleton attended the meeting via Zoom and took questions from Erickson and other committee members.

The committee was formed in May, and Monday was a precursor to upcoming listening sessions “to hear from the public about the current status of high school sports and how governance can be improved to better meet the needs of students and their families.”

Six bills have been filed in the Legislature in the past year regarding high school athletics, including one by Erickson. She proposed bill H. 4388, which would move the governing body of high school athletics from the current High School League to a “division of interscholastic athletics” as part of the state Department of Education.

“It is a very large issue,” Erickson said. “You don’t have this many bills filled by this many people. They have come to me every week of session asking for my assurance that this committee was going to take place.”

Erickson questioned many things about the SCHSL, such as the league’s voting procedure on its own legislative issues that gives more power to larger schools and a lack of game contracts between member schools.

Other proposed bills deal with the competitive balance issue, another hot topic within the SCHSL. Private and public charter school league members have dominated the state’s Class A and 2A levels of late, winning the majority of the state championships over the past five years.

One bill would have private and charter schools play up one level in classification, while another would have them going up two classifications. Another bill would force private and charter schools to have their own playoffs.

Singleton said the lopsidedness in the state’s lower classifications is the one of the biggest issues facing the league. He also said the league is hampered by a proviso that’s renewed in the state budget each year that, among other things, “guarantees that private or charter schools are afforded the same rights and privileges that are enjoyed by all other members of the association” and that participation cannot be restricted in “state playoffs or championships based solely on its status as a private school or charter school.”

In June, S.C. lawmakers removed from the state’s annual budget a measure that would have given the SCHSL more power to address and affect competitive balance.

“What’s unique about us is that every decision we make has a shelf life of, at most, two years,” Singleton said. The proviso “kind of puts us in a little bit of a bind because to be able to create a level playing field among high school athletics, we need to have the authority to to address instances of (competitiveness) imbalance as we see fit.”

Erickson contends the longstanding proviso doesn’t matter in terms of making changes.

”I’m not sure if they’re frozen from fear of stepping the wrong way or frozen of wanting to maintain what it used to be,” she said of the High School League.

Fair play

Some schools — Fairfield Central, Keenan, Eau Claire, Columbia, Mid-Carolina and Newberry — have taken matters into their own hands by taking a stand on competitive balance and fair play concerns. Those schools (Mid-Carolina and Newberry football only) are in Region 4-2A with Gray Collegiate, a charter school located in West Columbia that has built powerhouse sports teams and won or appeared in multiple state championships over the past five years.

Fairfield Central, Keenan and Eau Claire forfeited games with Gray Collegiate in the spring. This fall, all but Newberry High have told Gray Collegiate they won’t play them in any sports this year, forfeiting the games and giving Gray Collegiate the victories and automatic region championships.

“Why would you want to permit schools to forfeit anyway?” Rep. Jeff Bradley, R-Beaufort, asked Singleton. “If they don’t want to take a shellacking, why should they be playing anyway?”

Singleton replied with the different reasons schools might forfeit. He also said, “If teams could play, they should play.”

Asked by reporters if the committee would consider competitive balance concerns as part of its work, Erickson said everything is on the table at this point.

“We’ve got a lot of help from how other states are doing it,” she said. “We’ve got some plans in place for how to make things fair and equitable.”

There were 219 schools in the S.C. High School League as of the 2022-24 league realignment, a process that groups schools by classification and is updated every two years. Of those, 15 are charter schools and four are private schools — and four new charter schools have been approved for membership.

A modern approach to governing high school sports should be accommodating of the expanded choices that parents and students have for education, according to Erickson.

“I have a history of working with Dr. Singleton on getting something done,” Erickson said. “I hope we can see that happen this time. The whole idea here is that we’ve done this so long the same way.”

Committee members and Singleton were the only ones who spoke Monday. Another meeting is planned for Sept. 20 when public testimony will be allowed. More meetings, if necessary, would be held in the future, Erickson said.