<p>OK I’m incensed and if someone could advise…
Our baseball team was knocked out of state tourneys by a team that was recruited from the islands.
The opposing school went to the islands with a group of recruiters (OK, it’s a private boarding school, that’s ok) and the COACH. That’s NOT ok by our state high school athletic association rules.
They pulled in 17 kids from the islands to play ball, and they were bankrolled by a wealthy parent.
Unfortunately they lost the state final. I was hoping they’d win as to bring more scrutiny to the situation.
Has anyone dealt with violations of sports rules of this nature? Can you advise me as a parent- can anything be done?</p>
<p>Can you prove it?</p>
<p>The bankrolling of players, no. That’s the hearsay part (a parent on the team conversed with a parent/grandparent/uncle/godfather/whatever on the other team)…
Otherwise, here’s the link to the article:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/highschool/orl-hsmontverde1607may16,0,4868453.story?coll=orl-sports-headlines-hs[/url]”>http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/highschool/orl-hsmontverde1607may16,0,4868453.story?coll=orl-sports-headlines-hs</a></p>
<p>What I don’t understand are the states that allow private schools to compete for state championships with public schools. In Maryland the state playoffs are for public schools only. Private schools have their own playoffs in many cases but they are not sanctioned by the MPSSAA (governing board for public school athletics). There are too many discrepancies i.e. recruiting, eligibility, age level, etc. to make it a level playing field.</p>
<p>When I was coaching I refused to play or even scrimmage private schools (with one exception in our conference who adhered to strict guidelines as a condition of conference membership) because the private schools often used games/scrimmages with public school teams to recruit their kids. </p>
<p>There were many stories of public schools playing private ones for the competition and then the next thing the coach knew players would be gone and enrolled at the private school.</p>
<p>doubleplay,
I feel for you. I was in this situation a number of years ago. I coached a public high school sport on a varsity level and no matter how good my team was, we always lost to a parochial school team. We felt that the parochial school team had an unfair advantage in that they could pull kids into the school from a very wide area, whereas we only had kids who lived in the immediate area. It was very clear that many top athletes were choosing to go to the parochial school for two sports in particular in which the school was absolutely dominant. (Think a dozen straight years of winning sectionals.) Finally, before one final round game we handed a letter of protest to the chief official at the game, gave a copy to the opposing coach, and handed a third copy to a reporter in attendance. There was a big brouhaha, we were accused in the newspaper (by the other school) of “parochial school bashing, etc.” But, this was the start of a mini-revolution where this topic of mixing parochial/public schools in athletic leagues came to the forefront. While the parochial schools were never banned from competing in the league, they were “forced” to play up into divisions with much larger student bodies. This helped shift the balance a bit. What always puzzled me was that there was an existing parochial school league which these powerhouses did not compete in. I assume that they were looking for more competition, which is why they were playing with the public schools to begin with. I think that publicity and getting this out in the open is your only recourse. Is there a private school league this other team could compete in?</p>
<p>The article said that the basketball team was no longer competing in local and state competitions but was on the national circuit, whatever that is for high schoolers. If there’s something like that for baseball, it would probably be more appropriate than the private school league or the current situation.</p>