Over the last few years, change is seemingly the only constant for high school athletics across West Virginia .
More of it is here.
Starting last Friday, high school and middle school athletes are permitted to receive compensation for their name, image and likeness (NIL).
The policy was approved by the state school board last month and went into effect Friday, though there are specific guidelines permitting and prohibiting what is allowed.
Wayne Ryan, Executive Director of the West Virginia School Activities Commission, was a guest Tuesday on MetroNews Talkline and helped clarify the recently-adopted policy.
“We have to get ahead of the fact that NIL is now pretty much common throughout the country, even at the high school level,” Ryan said. “The policy is somewhat basic that we have to work off of right now and it’s also going to be somewhat fluid. This is uncharted territory to some degree. Basically, the athlete can benefit by their name, image and likeness. They cannot benefit by their association to their school. They can’t do things that promote the school, school logo or school mascot, even their sport or skill. They can only receive benefits through who they are. Although their fame may have come from athletics, it cannot be represented as athletic fame. It’s simply their image and likeness they can benefit from.”
West Virginia became the 44th state allowing youth athletes to monetize their name, image and likeness to some degree. West Virginia’s policy was largely put in place off what other states previously adopted.
“We reviewed several states and wrote a very basic policy and we stole from them in putting this together for the first draft,” Ryan said. “I’m sure at some point as we move forward, the NIL policy will get adjusted, but it’s where we stand right now. We thought we needed to get it in. We did look at other states and other states report it has not been a big problem for them.”
Yet because transfers are much more common all across West Virginia at present and few, if any, restrictions are in place to prevent them, Ryan feels there could be confusion regarding the NIL policy to start, but it’s one that must be closely monitored.
“The primary concerns are not that an individual can benefit. We have a transfer rule now in West Virginia that is pretty lenient, and the decision of our transfer rules from the legislation has provided some leverage for this NIL,” Ryan said. “It’s provided a place for NIL have a position in secondary sports and activities, because if they couldn’t transfer for athletic reasons as freely as they can now, this would not be as big an issue.”
That’s where assistance from school administrators, coaches and adults carries greater importance to help ensure a firm understanding of the rule.
“If there is a NIL deal that follows a transfer, it could become a result of undue influence and jeopardize their eligibility,” Ryan said. “The NIL policy is in place to serve our athletes at schools and keep them from violating rules. That’s why we felt we needed to put the policy in — not to try to get ahead of anything. We’re trying to prevent student-athletes or schools from being a position that would jeopardize eligibility or put their school or program at risk. We needed to pass some guidelines.”
Ryan believes the impact at the high school level won’t be near what it is in today’s climate of college athletics, but the 2025-26 athletics season will help bring a better discovery as to policy specifics that may or may not work as intended.
“We can really only take one path,” Ryan said. “Our rules are written by our principals organization, our Board of Control. We meet in late March or early April each year. Throughout the year, we’ll obviously have situations that will come up, intrigue us, question us and confuse us at times. We will have to work best to see what we can do moving forward to improve our policy.
“Our process would then be that would go to our Constitution and Bylaws and they would look at any edits or changes that can help us improve the situation, take it to our Board of Control for approval. So we can’t do anything recklessly, can’t do anything on a whim. We have to follow our procedures and protocols and all of our rules have to go through our principals organization. So we’ll be evaluating, taking notes and looking for any ways or things we might need to do to improve the policy moving forward.“