Shot down: State board opts against year-round coaching

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The state board of education on Thursday killed a proposal from the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission that would have opened up coaching access for high schools around the state year-round.

Board member Beverly Kingery started off the meeting, before the vote, by reading a letter asking the board to reject the proposal in an effort to further study the best options for the state.

The board then made a motion and approved a list of other separate SSAC proposals, with the exception of the year-round coaching proposal that ultimately was passed on and didn’t even see a vote.

“One thing I am taking away from it is that we have to come up with a happy medium compared with what we have and where we need to go,” said SSAC executive director Gary Ray. “The challenge we have now is to go back to the drawing table and come up with a proposal that will work for our kids.”

Immediate reaction came in on Twitter after the board’s decision, including Huntington football coach Billy Seals.

“Unbelievable! Let’s just keep WV kids behind the rest of the country,” the tweet read. “No reason for not taking a vote.”

The proposal underwent a 30-day public comment period that ended last month, sparking a high amount of feedback from coaches, athletes and parents around the state.

“If you look at the comments for the rule, it was 2-1 in favor of the proposal,” said Martinsburg principal Trent Sherman who presented the proposal. “I think the people of West Virginia see that we need to make a change.”

Ray said a committee could be formed now to look at the best way moving forward with any future proposals and changes.

“It’s not a dead issue,” Ray said. “We’ll be moving forward to find a happy medium that will be satisfactory for everyone to accept. People feel a need to have more of an opportunity for our professionals to have access to kids. It takes time, but eventually I’m quite sure that it will happen (in some form).”

Ray added that a big concern for the proposal by many came in regard to the smaller schools in the state.

“Larger schools have more kids to pull from,” Ray said. “But smaller schools with 300 kids or so don’t have as much to pull from. Again, there’s somewhere in the middle that will be satisfactory.”

A proposal passed last year by the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission would have expanded the practice period for the entire summer. However, the measure never made it on the state board of education’s agenda for a final approval.

“We’re limited in what we can do,” said South Charleston football coach Donnie Mays. “All (we’ve been) asking for is after a workout, let us take a football out there if the kids want to go throw and we’ll go spend 25 minutes with them. That would be a lot better than people outside of our programs coming in gathering a group of kids from different schools. I think you kill the community aspect of it, which I think is very important.”

The new proposal this year narrowly passed by a 54-53 vote during the SSAC Board of Control meeting before eventually heading to the state board.

“I think the worst thing we could do is open it clear up, because without any parameters, it will be abused – that’s Thunderdome. I don’t think you can give people those options. You have to limit it,” said Morgantown football coach John Bowers. “I’m a big fan of 15 days in the summer, use them as you wish, non-consecutive days. I’m a big fan of kids having a summer.”

With the proposal passed over, the current three-week summer window that’s in place for off-season practices will remain.

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