Anson's 2019 football playoffs ban sparked legislative interest in NCHSAA
General Assembly interest into the inner workings of the N.C. High School Athletic Association began in the fall of 2019 after Anson High School was banned from the state playoffs due to multiple ejections for fighting, a state senator says.
Sen. Tom McInnis, who represents Anson, Moore, Richmond and Scotland counties, said he began looking at the association after Anson's football team had multiple players ejected following an altercation. Since then, the scope of the legislature's inquiry into the association has grown.
"The genesis of the whole deal was the Richmond-Anson game back in 2019. It was a non-conference game ... to help Anson to have a nice gate, to raise money for their program," McInnis said. "The score ran up real heavy in the first half, and two boys kind of got emotional and they bumped up against one another – never a fight. The word 'fight' can't be used in what happened. They just kind of bumped up against one another."
Two players were ejected by officials at the time, McInnis said, but the NCHSAA reviewed the film after the fact and decided to eject additional players from Anson because they left the bench area. NCHSAA rules state that any player who leaves the bench during during a fight on the field is considered to be part of the fight, even if they never actively participates in the fighting.
"It was significant enough that, because of that number (of ejected players), that excluded them from any postseason championship play, and it happened to be the one year they were eligible," said McInnis.
When a football player is ejected for fighting, the player misses the next two contests. A team who has three or more players ejected for fighting over the course of the season is declared ineligible for the playoffs. Anson met that threshold in the game against Richmond.
NCHSAA Commissioner Que Tucker confirmed the details around the incident between Richmond and Anson, but said the NCHSAA has a policy against releasing specific information about infractions. That information must come from the individual schools, Tucker said.
"I reviewed the tapes too," McInnis said. "I couldn't see what they were talking about. I could not see enough evidence to see there was an infraction of the rules based on the rule book they showed me.
"I think it was subjective. I think they did it just because they could. Anson County is a small, rural school district ... those kids don't have a voice, but their senator has a voice, and this senator is not going to just stand idly by."
McInnis said he reached out to the NCHSAA after it handed down its decision to disqualify Anson from the playoffs.
"I said, 'Look, this is not professional sports. No one is making millions of dollars. We're trying to educate some kids. Let's rescind those ejections back to the point they don't lose their ability to play in postseason championship play,'" he said
Tucker confirmed the NCHSAA heard from McInnis in 2019. She said he reached out to the association the week before the playoff brackets were seeded, despite the incident happening in August and the school not filing an appeal.
McInnis was not satisfied with the response he got from the NCHSAA.
"It wasn't a 'maybe,' or 'we'll think about it.' It was an 'absolutely not.' It was a dictatorship. They said, 'We would set a bad precedent," said McInnis.
The senator, though, said the association had already set that precedent with the treatment of another team that same fall.
On Aug. 30, 2019, North Stanly High School cheerleaders were photographed holding a "Trump 2020" sign at a high school football game. The NCHSAA placed the team on probation for the remainder of the school year for violating its rules requiring "a wholesome athletic environment."
In response to that punishment, supporters of then-President Donald J. Trump planned a protest which to a North Stanly home football game being postponed.
About a month later, the NCHSAA lifted the cheer team's probation.
"They rescinded that and let them go back," McInnis said. "That's what should have happened here."
Tucker said it wasn't fair to compare the two incidents though.
"These two situations are apples and oranges," she said. "The Anson ruling stems from a rule put in place by the Board of Directors banning playoff participation for a team that has more than three individuals involved in fighting during a season ... North Stanly’s cheerleaders were put on probation by the Commissioner based on a violation of the spirit of the cheerleading guidelines of the Association and there was no prescribed penalty. The Commissioner, as she is empowered to do by the Board and the Regulations of the Association, imposed a penalty that she believed to be fitting to the infraction. Upon further review and appeal from the member school, the penalty was revised.”
The NCHSAA stuck with its initial ruling in Anson's case though. Anson, despite winning the Rocky River Conference and posting a 7-3 overall record, was not eligible for the state playoffs. That led to McInnis looking further into the the NCHSAA.
“I stuck my camel’s nose under the tent, and when I saw their financials, I jumped out of my skin – $40 million in cash and securities and liquid assets," he said.
According to the most recent tax documents filed with the IRS, the NCHSAA reported total assets of $41,241,893 at the end of 2018. That included $23,779,866 in endowment funds.
"What is an organization that’s supposed to be helping our kids doing with that kind of money?" McInnis asked. “Their goal should be to administer athletics and to get the districts right and that sort of thing, and that’s as far as they need to go. They don’t need to be an NCAA or something like that. They just make sure the kids get the ability to play in an organized and structured fashion.”
That started what McInnis has called an "investigation" into the NCHSAA. In interviews with five lawmakers, HighSchoolOT has learned the investigation has grown to include the participation of charter and non-boarding parochial schools, realignment, the authority of the NCHSAA to make health-related decisions during the coronavirus pandemic, and whether or not the association should be allowed to govern as a private non-profit corporation.
“There’s an immense amount of investigation that’s taking place right now, and there’s a lot of areas that are being looked at. I don’t have an answer to your question about where it ends up or where it’s going, but I can tell you it’s not stopping," McInnis said. “I’m confident as time goes on and we keep peeling the leaves off the onion, we’ll come to some conclusion ... As it is right now, there’s no oversight, and I think that oversight and accountability and transparency has to be paramount, and as I see everything right now, we don’t have that.”
Tucker said she believes this inquiry would have never started if the association did as McInnis asked and reversed the Anson decision.
“When Sen. McInnis called, we informed him of the ruling and the process behind the decision. While he didn’t like the answer, the response from the Association was consistent with other rulings on schools in similar situations to Anson," said Tucker. "When I met with him in December 2020, he was very upfront that he would not have been looking into the Association, its finances or any other Association business had the NCHSAA simply done what he asked and put the Anson football team in the playoffs.”
The NCHSAA has scheduled a press conference for Thursday at 9:30 a.m. to discuss the concerns expressed by state legislators.
