By Stephen Smoot
They were supposed to be waking up in a hotel room in the state capital, championship dreams and winning game plans in their heads.
Instead, East Hardy Cougar volleyball players, joined by player parents from Pendleton County, and many from the Tyler Consolidated squad, came to watch Hardy County Schools Superintendent Sheena Van Meter and counsel do battle with the West Virginia Secondary Schools Activities Commission and its executive director Dave Price.
Judge Carter Williams scheduled a special session at 8 AM to bring the litigants together while the single A bracket in the West Virginia State Volleyball Tournament remains postponed.
The hearing focused on volleyball only and avoided touching on the much larger disruptions facing the state high school football playoffs.
Problems in both volleyball and football stem from the WVSSAC’s decision to go from a reclassification system based simply on enrollment numbers to one that saw 80 percent of the decision based on student population, 10 percent on school location, and 10 percent on socioeconomic factors. It changed the standards at the same time as it broadened the move to a Class AAAA category from just basketball to a broader number of sports, including football and volleyball.
A number of schools challenged the recategorization, at least in football, prior to the season, including Petersburg High School who went from Class A to Class AA prior to the season, but won reconsideration and a drop back to Class A to open the season.
Tyler Consolidated was similarly elevated to Class AA, but filed suit in October for recategorization. When that school won their suit, although not explicitly ordered to, the WVSSAC dropped Tyler Consolidated into Class A postseason play, giving them a play in game. Tyler Consolidated won that game, setting up a first round game against East Hardy.
Hardy County Schools, advocating for East Hardy High School, filed suit to prevent the Cougars from taking on a team that, as a Class AA school, dominated its opposition on the way to a 26 and five record, including decisive victories over much larger schools. East Hardy, as the top seed, would usually face the lowest seed in Class A, as opposed to a team that had performed well in Class AA.
Also, Tyler Consolidated had not won a regional game to earn their way into the state tournament.
Judge Wiliams expressed that his primary concern lay with the student-athletes, their parents, then coaches and communities. He added that “no court . . . has gone looking for these cases, I assure you” and that, in his estimation, the other courts involved, which included another suit from Trinity Christian in Monongalia County were “just trying to do the best they can” with the increasingly complex situation.
He levied several criticisms against the WVSSAC as both counsel presented their cases.
One came from the fact that the WVSSAC did not consider East Hardy or other schools involved in the playoffs as “indispensable parties” and that prior to making any decision, the athletics governing body should have consulted with the schools affected. Changing the bracket “midstream,” as he repeatedly put it, adding that the fundamentals “of fair play have to be followed.” He later asked “why have a tournament if in midstream we can change it?”
Judge Williams, without condemning the idea as inherently bad, still questioned why the WVSSAC introduced “subjectivity” into the reclassification issue, which “led to this mess.”
Stephen Gandee, representing the WVSSAC, replied that other states had gone to something similar and had earlier focused on the process that left to the change. Judge Williams replied “I don’t want to know the history. It seems very subjective now.”
Later he said that if the WVSSAC had simply left the categorization at enrollment only, “these young ladies would be playing now.”
School officials elsewhere privately speculated that part of the impetus lay in redressing the competitive balance in Class A between private schools that sometimes recruit beyond county and state lines and public schools that cannot. The WVSSAC went on to say that the pilot reclassification had produced no problems when used in basketball alone and that the Board of Control voted overwhelmingly to adopt the formula.
Judge Wiliams also emphasized a lost opportunity to have resolved the issues well before the start of the fall sports season. A case involving reclassification went before the Kanawha County Circuit Court in April of this year, but for whatever reason, was allowed to lapse. He cited the failure to see the case through to a legal decision as a major step toward the problems faced in both volleyball and football now.
Judge Williams also stated again and again that “I don’t know what the remedy is except that the case goes before the Supreme Court.”
The fall term for the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals ended on Nov 14. As of the time of this writing, the volleyball tournament remains postponed until a final decision can be reached.
