DURHAM — Leaders of the North Carolina High School Athletic Association expect an agreement to be worked out with the State Board of Education that will allow the state’s athletic governing body to continue to oversee high school athletics for public schools.
“I think it'll be settled soon,” said NCHSAA President Bobby Wilkins, who’s also the principal at Hendersonville High School. “And if it's not, it'd be a big surprise.”
NCHSAA Commissioner Que Tucker said Thursday, following the NCHSAA’s Board of Directors meetings, the NCHSAA executive committee met with the state board of education Tuesday to continue the process of moving toward the signing of a memorandum of understanding.
“Just really starting to scratch the surface of here's what the legislation says,” Tucker said. “Now, what does that look like, what does that mean, as we move forward? We talked about them needing to have some better understanding of certain areas that are mentioned in the legislation. For example, they need to have a better understanding of our finances and fees, etc. They want to have a better understanding of our penalty system.”
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State statutes require a MOU to be signed by March 15.
“We feel like we're gonna have something and it's gonna be a really good thing,” Wilkins said. “As we've talked and met with that group, it’s been very positive. It's been a surprise that it's been positive because of what everybody's saying, but they were so nice the other day. We talked things out, we put our opinions in and they put their opinions in and it worked out to be a very positive meeting and we were very pleased with that.”
Concerns raised by the state about the NCHSAA’s powers included a perceived lack of transparency, particularly when it comes to the finances of the organization.
In an effort to be more transparent, the NCHSAA said it will be posting financial information, including three years of audit information and distributions from the endowment fund to the NCHSAA website for the public to view.
“Transparency, particularly anything that's related to schools is absolutely needed and it's critical,” said NCHSAA Vice President Dr. Rob Jackson, who also serves as the Carteret County Superintendent. “Any efforts that we can make to increase the transparency of the operation of the organization, I think it's important for our member schools, for the principals and athletic directors, the coaches, the parents, even our student-athletes to understand that the high school athletic association is doing its best to do well by the schools.”
The NCHSAA reported a deficit of more than $1.2 million for 2021-22, largely because of the pandemic.
“The pandemic has had an incredible impact on life, everywhere and for everyone, including the association,” Jackson said. “So, previous streams of revenue are not available the way they might have been when you don't have the same number of playoff games.”
The NCHSAA said the deficit is at least in part from trying to take financial stress off member schools during the pandemic.
“This board had the flexibility to be able to do some things last year, and then again this year to absorb some of those expenses for member schools, including not collecting playoff shares up until, I think, the football state championship game, which was a neutral site game all last year,” NCHSAA Assistant Commissioner James Alverson said. “Early round games for all the schools that participated kept all that money.”
Shot clock or no shot clock?
The National Federation of State High School Associations passed a rule to allow state associations to adopt a shot clock for basketball for the 2022-23 school year, if they so choose.
Because of that, the NCHSAA surveyed it’s membership about the possibility of requiring a shot clock for basketball starting in 2022-23.
“There was not overwhelming support for adding the shot clock for 22-23,” Tucker said of the response from schools in the state. “So, that allows us to have the opportunity to see what happens nationwide in 22-23. It will also allow the Federation to see what happens nationwide. If the Federation sees overwhelming support to implement a shot clock, then it could force the federation to say, ‘With this type of support, we should just go ahead and mandate the shot clock.’”
Alverson said the cost for a school to add shot clocks to its gymnasium would cost around $3,000 per school, plus any costs associated with a person to control the shot clock.
David Kehrli is a sports reporter at the Burlington Times-News and USA Today Network. You can reach him at david.kehrli@thetimesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @DavidKehrliTN. Subscribe to the Burlington Times-News here.
This article originally appeared on Times-News: NCHSAA expects signed agreement to come with State Board of Education
