corey.davis@gaflnews.com

GAINESVILLE-Area athletic directors and coaches got their way, as their athletic programs will have a easier path to the state final four.

At a meeting Tuesday morning at the Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) office in Gainesville, the FHSAA Board of Directors unanimously voted to create a new division to provide additional opportunities for private and public schools in rural areas.

“The vote was unanimous, sending a great message of hearing the concerns from our small rural schools, and that the Board is willing to create an opportunity for fair and equitable competition for those schools that have a limited student population pool,” said FHSAA Executive Director Roger Dearing.  “This was a vote that helps about 40 to 50 schools, and hurts no one.”

The new unnamed league, tentatively called Division II, will have at least 32 teams playing in football, volleyball, boys basketball, girls basketball, boys soccer, girls soccer, baseball and softball.

From the Panhandle to the Suwannee Valley, small school coaches are sick and tired of having to deal with private schools that dominate their sports, despite having no enrollment boundaries.

For a number of years, there has been a growing concern among public and private school members of the FHSAA, regarding the issues of: attendance boundaries, open enrollment, foreign student eligibility requirements and guidelines, and the potential for illegal recruiting of student-athletes.

Several schools from Pensacola to Miami, formed a Urban/Rural committee to help combat this problem with the help from the FHSAA.  

The committee met with the FHSAA two weeks ago in Port St. Joe and earlier this year to recommended their proposals. Their mission was to gather information and suggestions, while meeting with constituents throughout the state of Florida, about the problems and potential solutions of creating a more fair and equitable system of competition for interscholastic athletics.

The committee researched what other southeastern state associations are doing to “level the playing field” in terms of obtaining and developing talent for student-athletes in the state of Florida.

The committee, which was commissioned in the fall of 2009, traveled throughout the state to gather feedback from parents, coaches and other stakeholders at public meetings about issues of concern regarding participation.

Six meetings were held last fall in Lake City, Ocala, Bradenton, Marianna, Hollywood and Gainesville. 

From this feedback, the committee developed the following recommendations:

• To create a new division of participating schools, private and public, which have been designated as rural by the Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development, and whose student enrollments are 500 or less. This classification shall be limited to the following sports: boys and girls basketball, baseball, football, boys and girls soccer, softball and girls volleyball.

• To seek input from member schools regarding reclassification and redistricting processes.

“We have a number of member schools that need issues addressed in terms of equitable competition,” said Dearing.  “We need to make sure people know this is not a public-private issue. This is an issue of small rural schools that do not draw their student populations from larger urban areas or outside the state or country, and have a difficult time competing against those that do. There is a way for all schools to exist and succeed with the advent of this new division.”

As many as 59 schools are a part of this including locally Branford, Hamilton County, Lafayette and Melody Christian.

The basis of the committee is football driven. Dearing commented that 42 of the 59 schools play football but several schools don’t, including Altha, Bethlehem, Cedar Key, Everglades Prep, Heartland Christian, Heritage, Melody Christian, Paxton, Ponce de Leon, Poplar Springs Graceville and Walker Memorial.

One anonymous 1B coach was adamant about the situation sharing his thoughts on a high school football Web site FlaVarsity.com.

“No matter what the latest ‘cover’ for it, the issue is private vs. public. With them stating that this “wasn’t about private vs. public” means that it actually is and that they will not address it.

“The public versus private almost boiled over two years ago and thankfully it was killed by cooler heads. We do not need to have two separate worlds here in the Florida, it would be a mess and cost too much money. It almost happened 2 years ago, glad it didn’t.

“This new idea might be a salve to this wound, but I’m not sure that it could work. They are throwing this bone out there and it certainly is better than wrecking the entire system though. But it is a weird idea, I can’t even grasp how they are going to make it work.”

The coach went on to say other coaches are angry as well.

“But coaches are fed-up, I know a lot of them are. You could even name this the ‘Bolles bill’ if you want. Small towns are sick and tired of schools being classified with them and forced to play them when they get wrecked on Friday nights.

“It’s not the fact they lose, it’s usually the case that they can’t even compete with the private schools that can bring in any superstar they want from anytown they want and pay their tuition to play there.

“It’s not the losing, it’s the getting totally embarrassed that is the issue. And to these towns, there are no solutions and they feel the private schools are cheating and there is not way to stop them.

“It’s not cheating, it’s not recruiting, it’s just the system that’s in place. These private schools are not cheating anybody, if they were they would have been turned in long, long ago. They are doing exactly, by the rules, what they are allowed to do-pay the tuition of kids who can’t afford it, via a third party. They just happen to have lots of money.

“And small towns are sick of it, coaches are sick of it and if something isn’t done they will force a split from public vs. private.

That, in my opinion, will force too many wonderful little private Christian schools out of the business of football.

“These little schools don’t recruit, nor pay money for athletes to go there, they actually play football with the kids who go to their little schools. That’s why they’re not any good. These are not the schools that this new idea/law/compromise/solution are aimed at.

“This law is aimed at schools such as Bolles with kids from around the world, and Trinity Catholic in Ocala, who have kids transferring from the Tampa Bay area to play there.

“Although they don’t play, I’ll use the example of Branford, Bradford or Bell, etc, they cannot compete with that. I know some of these coaches, they are not whiners, they just happen to only have the kids in their area for their teams.

Local coaches shared their thoughts about the matter. 

Hamilton County baseball coach Ryan Mitchell, which is in a district with North Florida Christian and Maclay stated, “I think that this new division gives smaller public rural schools a chance to be competitive at every sport.”

Mitchell went on to say, “The way it stands now, any small school in our area will have to beat at least one private school in the playoffs in order to win a state championship. Most of these schools have great programs and advantages that are not afforded to us at rural public schools and makes it really hard to compete at that level.

“I think that this new classification gives a better chance to compete in the playoffs than the move to classes 2B and 1B that have been done in the past seven or eight years.

“I don’t think the issue lies with public schools vs. private schools. I think that the issue is trying to create a fair playing ground for schools, like most of the ones in our area, that have a limited number of resources. I think that this a good move and I look forward to seeing what decisions are made in the next few months.

“If you look at the Class 1A and Class 2A baseball and softball brackets, there are few public schools left. The winner of the Lafayette/Sneads softball game will be the only public school in the Final Four in either 1A or 2A. You can even see that trend in a 3A a little. Most public baseball schools that played got eliminated yesterday. Just more fuel for the fire. “

Melody Christian boys basketball coach Mike Raines knows exactly what Mitchell and the rest of the smaller schools are going through.

As the area’s only private school, Melody only inherits kids from the Live Oak and Jasper communities. Although Raines team has been highly successful the last three years, they haven’t won their district or advance past the first round of the state playoffs, because of other private schools that recruit kids from all over the country and other countries.

Arlington Country Day brings in kids from North Carolina, Maryland, Puerto Rico and other states as well and houses them in off campus apartments.

“Arlington Country Day (ACD) is not on our level, we’ve been very good the last three years winning 73 games, but for my kids it’s hard to compete with them in the same district.

“ACD has been to six straight Final Fours and had won five state championships until this season, I can’t beat them. One of my players plays travel ball with some of their kids and they told them about how they all live in a apartment together. It doesn’t take a genius to figure what’s going on over there, although you can’t accuse someone without evidence.

Miller was confident if this new league was in place his team would have more hardware for sure.

“I think we would have definitely won state without those schools this season. We beat Madison County and Taylor County both by 30 points this past season.”

Branford football coach Bill Wiles chimed in with his thoughts as well.    

“I think it is needed.  It will align common schools in a common

classification.  It does not have anything to do with “private” schools. There will be private schools in the rural classification.  This is about urban areas like Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Orlando and rural areas like Branford, Trenton, Bell, and Bronson. 

“Urban schools draw from hundreds of thousands by population while rural schools only draw from populations of maybe two to three thousand people. It is a no-brainer to me. As long as they cap enrollment at approximately 500 I do not see a problem.  If the enrollment is allowed to go much over 500, it will not do what it is intended to do,” said Branford football coach Bill Wiles.    

Not everyone was on board, though. North Florida Christian athletic director Mike Posey, who is in a district with Branford, Lafayette and Hamilton County, was not pleased with the decision.

“The purpose of this was to level the playing field, it already is a fair table,” Posey said. “Sports goes in cycles, all schools go through cycles. It’s not like we’re winning multiple state titles.”

Posey also noted it’s been several years since his baseball, softball and basketball teams made it to the regional finals (Elite 8). They keep losing to small rural schools and he offered statewide stats to state his case.

Posey was given three minutes to speak about the topic and read stories published in Panhandle newspapers, including one from the Santa Rosa Gazette, in which he claims several coaches made inaccurate statements.

“The Jay coach spoke about how his program will never be able to compete against schools like NFC. We haven’t played them in football in over a decade,” Posey said.

He went on to say no one contacted him or anyone at his school regarding the matter, asking for input. He said he wasn’t allowed to sit on the committee, even though an AD for a 4A school – which wouldn’t be affected – was.

The stats Posey provided showed since 1999, there have been 30 state football champions from Class 2A to 1B, 14 of which were public, 16, private. In basketball, 65 titles have been awarded for the boys and girls, 36 public and 29 private in boys and 40 public and 25 private in girls. Sixty-six titles in baseball, 31 have been public and 35 private and sixty-six in softball, 37 were public and 29 were private.

Posey also went on to say it’s not as easy as some think at NFC, as the school competes against 15 other Tallahassee high schools for kids, and NFC athletes have to be able to afford tuition.   

The FHSAA will now send out survey forms sometime in September through October.

As long as 32 of the schools agree, the FHSAA will then move forward with the league and in November assign the new league districts for the 2011-2012 school year.

Posey will have to wait and see how things go, as the pilot program would be for two years with a two-year extension if things go well.