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Taking on the greediness of the NCHSAA

Longdayrunner · 868

Offline Longdayrunner

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on: January 10, 2022, 11:35:19 AM
Taking on the greediness of the NCHSAA

January 7, 2022 Laurinburg Exchange

https://www.laurinburgexchange.com/opinion/56131/taking-on-the-greediness-of-the-nchsaa

This is long overdue, for which we apologize — to State Sen. Tom McInnis, mostly.

It’s been quite some time since McInnis helped lead a charge to investigate the North Carolina High School Athletic Association. Earlier this week, he spoke at length with the Scotland County Board of Commissioners on the subject — and you can read more on it today in Senior Writer Katelin Gandee’s story.

What the in-depth investigation turned up was astonishing. The NCHSAA had a bank account flush with more than $40 million that had little or no earmarks for assisting public school athletics.

McInnis told county commissioners the investigation uncovered where some of that money was coming from.

“They were hitting Scotland for extra money every year for this or that,” McInnis said. “Our parents were out there selling popcorn and washing cars, doing anything they could to put uniforms on kids and give them safe equipment. But the folks at the High School Athletic Association turned their process and their facility into a money-making machine.”

And that’s not all.

“They would use financial penalties against Scotland High School,” McInnis said. “They had two pages of financial penalties that they could be charged for from $100 to $4,000 or $3,000. I went through the list and they charged for some very light infractions. I looked into that and the financial penalties over five years amounted to over $416,000 that they took in … they didn’t give that money or invest that money for anything other than to grow that fund balance.”

If $416,000 over five years charged against Scotland High doesn’t get your attention, we have to wonder why. Those are your dollars the NCHSAA took.

And then there are the words “money-making machine” and “grow the fund balance.” That’s what the NCHSAA was doing to athletics programs across the state — all under the leadership of Que Tucker, who has a reputation of caring little about the real safety of student-athletes and more care about money. A case in point is the rule that high schools can only schedule “X” number of games … UNLESS an extra game is scheduled as an “endowment” game, which funnels gate money straight to the NCHSAA.

If McInnis came up short anywhere, it’s that he wasn’t able to get Tucker ousted.

But he did manage to help get House Bill 91 passed in the General Assembly, which has given regulation of high school athletics to the State Board pf Education.

In our collective mind, McInnis is a 2021 hero — not just for his district which includes Scotland County, but across North Carolina. What he took on and what he accomplished is nothing short of game-winning touchdown, game=winning grand slam, hole-in-one and slam dunk.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t re-share McInnis’ most-important quote from earlier this week.

“We have children playing children’s games, this isn’t professional sports,” McInnis said. “We’ve got to let the children play and gain knowledge and experience and skill by being in high school athletics.”

We agree — but will add this: without the greediness and highway robbery by those at the highest level.

***

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Greed, in the end, fails even the greedy.”



Offline chickengut

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Reply #1 on: January 10, 2022, 01:15:22 PM
Additionally, State Senator Vickie Sawyer, from Iredell County, worked very diligently on this legislation.  Senator Sawyer should be commended for her work to keep our monies in our local schools.