West Virginia’s delegates are all from communities where schools and their sports teams are at the center of activity. So delegates from all over the state were primed to jump into a debate over athletics eligibility and transfer rules on the final day of the regular legislative session.
“Let the kids play. Let the kids play,” said Delegate Shawn Fluharty, D-Ohio, during a back-and-forth that sprawled over an hour.
The debate was over whether to agree to an amended bill sent over by the Senate.
Senators earlier in the week combined a bill that would expand athletics opportunities for Hope Scholarship recipients with a policy that would provide greater transfer options for high school athletes.
Earlier in the legislative session, delegates had overwhelmingly passed the Hope Scholarship bill. But delegates have been wary of the athletics transfer policy in past sessions and had recently parked a version of that bill on the inactive calendar.
So the Senate leveraged a choice: pick both policies or lose both policies.
At the end of the debate Saturday afternoon, delegates passed the combined bill, 64-26.
As originally structured, House Bill 2820 would allow Hope Scholarship recipients attending private schools, microschools, learning pods or homeschool settings to participate on public school teams unless the sport is already offered at their school.
Delegate Kathie Hess Crouse, R-Putnam, was that bill’s main sponsor and, as she sat outside the House chamber on a break, she prepared her argument in favor of the combined bill.
“I just want to see kids play who are eligible to play and want to play,” Crouse said. “Just let the kids play.”
She was accepting of the Hope Scholarship bill being combined with the transfer bill. “Of course, I didn’t originally put that in there; the Senate did,” she said. “But you know, kids don’t always have a choice about being transferred from one school to another. There’s many reasons kids transfer.”
About the same time, Delegate Dana Ferrell was preparing his argument about why the House should refuse to concur with the bill that now includes policies that were originally in Senate Bill 262, allowing student-athletes to transfer schools at least one time and keep their athletic eligibility.
He said the strategy was “like a tick, like a parasite, hanging onto other bills, trying to get it through.”
Ferrell contended small schools would lose student-athletes to bigger schools. “You’re going to have haves and have-nots and all-star teams,” he said.
Other delegates made that same argument, but it wasn’t the view that prevailed in the end.
Senator Ryan Weld, R-Brooke, the main sponsor of the transfer bill over the couple of years, stood in the back of the House chamber as debate concluded and as the bill finally passed. Weld said he was gratified by the vote.
“I think it gives kids the opportunity to make sure, along with their parents, that they can make a decision about where they want to go to school and not think about being forced to sit out for a year just because they transferred school,” he said.
“And I really think it works to ensure that every kid in the state has every opportunity that they should have.”