CHSAA membership shoots down Colorado private high school sports promotion system

The CHSAA legislative council meeting on Thursday. (Ryan Casey, The Denver Post)

AURORA???The public-private debate surrounding high school athletics in Colorado isn't going anywhere. Instead, after a meeting on Thursday, the state's membership remains divided.

A proposal seeking to install a promotion system for successful private school programs was narrowly shot down at the Colorado High School Activities Association's legislative council meeting in Aurora on Thursday morning.

"We're split," CHSAA commissioner Paul Angelico said afterward.

The proposal would have applied to any school that can selectively pick its enrollment, and sought to measure success over a four-year period with a points system.

Effectively, private schools would have gathered points for successes such as state championships (10 points), semifinal appearances (six points) and so on. If schools went over a 32-point threshold, they would be forced to move up a classification for at least one two-year cycle.

The bylaw, requiring a simple majority, went down by way of a 34-33 vote ? but only after a handful of private school administrators spoke out against it.

"I'm all for athletic equity and competitive balance, but I think that this proposal, with the way it's worded, is a bad precedent to set," Kent Denver athletic director Scott Yates said before the vote. "In this case, we are isolating that group and we are proposing, to some degree, that there is a punishment for success."

The proposal would not have changed the classification structure until the 2016-17 season.

The 32-point threshold, though, is actually rather steep. Hypothetically, if the rule were to go into effect starting next school year, the change would have affected only seven individual teams, Angelico said.

Still, the proposal failed. And Alexander Dawson athletic director David Hansburg was its most vocal opponent.

"The price for going to Alexander Dawson School is $21,000," Hansburg said before the vote. "I think this

rule is implying that we are throwing $21,000 at certain kids who have certain abilities."

In arguing against the proposal, the private administrators continually hammered the point that they do not recruit athletes. But Angelico said the proposal did not deal with recruiting.

"It was not about those things," he said. "There's an imbalance of competitive balance somewhere, and this is a way to address it.

"When it was presented to me by the superintendents, it was about, 'There's a disproportionate amount of championships won by some schools (and) one could attribute it to the fact that they're private.' "

The legislative council was not in the mood to change things on Thursday morning. Among proposals also shot down:

? One which would have allowed coaches to hold voluntary clinics, open gyms or weight room sessions with eighth-grade students living in their attendance area.

? An exception allowing teams to play in tournaments over winter break.

? An expansion of softball's season to 23 games.

? A change to the Sunday contact rule which would have allowed club coaches to interact with their high school athletes out of season.

Ryan Casey: 303-954-1983, rcasey@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jryancasey

Source: http://www.denverpost.com/preps/ci_23054110/chsaa-shoots-down-colorado-private-high-school-sports?source=rss

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