W.Va. school board tables vote on year-round coaching
Coaching high school sports in West Virginia will not get easier anytime soon. The state board of education turned down a proposal from the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission Thursday that would have allowed coaches to work with student athletes year-round.
Media outlets reported that the board tabled the discussion for further study.
Current policy allows three weeks of out-of-season sports practice or related activities. The proposal would have allowed coaching all year except for weekends, the week of July 4 and a week before the start of each sport’s season.
Proponents said the change would have helped schools that compete against teams from bordering states where out-of-season coaching is allowed.
According to the Associated Press, state school board member Beverly Kingery had expressed concerns that year-round coaching would interfere with family time. The proposal was narrowly approved by the Secondary School Activities Commission’s Board of Control, which is composed of school principals.
Competing against schools from other states is not the issue. Helping student athletes develop outside of their respective sports seasons is what is important. In Pennsylvania, many basketball programs compete in summer leagues that last 4-6 weeks without forcing kids to specialize. The same goes for football, which allows coaches to work with athletes during 7-on-7 passing competitions throughout the summer. I do agree with the bill’s opponents who say that a happy medium has to be found, but if high school coaches are not allowed to work with athletes during the summer months than those kids will simply find another coach to work with and more often than not it’s an AAU or travel coach.
That is not a system that should be supported. Ask every high school coach in Pennsylvania how they feel about AAU and the vast majority will voice their displeasure with a system that is more about winning trophies at tournaments than player development.
Another argument against the bill was that it put small schools at a disadvantage. Well, forcing kids to find coaching elsewhere usually translate to specialize, which is what causes dwindling participation numbers.
Coaches across West Virginia voiced their displeasure on social media after the proposal was killed and that won’t change anytime soon. It puts student athletes in the state further behind than their peers from other states and when it comes to college recruiting, that could make a major difference.
It will be interesting to see if a change is made anytime soon.