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Lacrosse makes changes to follow OSAA rules |
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Written by Emma Forslund
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Wednesday, 10 March 2010 |
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At Grant, club sports are responsible for creating their own rules and regulations. In contrast, the OSAA imposes its own rules on school-based sports teams. This important difference allows club teams to occasionally ignore eligibility rules. The gap between educational requirements for club and school sports means that the responsibility to "self-police" in the words of snowboarding coach Amy Bernhart, falls into the hands of club team student athletes. This issue has not been raised in thep ast, but now some club sports at Grant are fighting to establish the same rules that other school sports are required to follow.
The OSAA rules mandate that student-athletes maintain a 2.0 GPA or above, take five classes, and receive no F’s. Surprisingly, these rules don’t apply to Grant’s many club sports. There are three different levels of sports at any given high school; the first are school sports like basketball and track, the next step down are activities like cheerleading, and at the bottom of the bracket are the club sports which include the lacrosse, ski and snowboard teams.
While club teams aren’t required to follow OSAA rules, coaches like to implement them anyway. “Although we aren’t a sport, we still like to follow the guidelines,” says varsity women’s lacrosse coach Megan Looney. Since there are no requirements about GPA or class schedule, it’s up to the coach to decide whether or not students are eligible to play. Senior Erin Burns, captain of the women’s lacrosse team, says, “Most of the players are pretty responsible about keeping up with grades and classes.” Bernhart adds, “I feel like I have a really good group of students.” Jacque Sage, athletic director at Grant, says that club teams choose to follow the rules on their own, and have no real rules implemented by the OSAA. Recently there have been some changes within the women’s lacrosse program; the team is trying to implement a GPA requirement. Burns thinks that the changes are reasonable. “I think it’s fair, because other sports have it and we want to be a PIL team; the change would make it easier to transition when we become a school sport.” Senior lacrosse player Morgan Battaglia agrees, saying, “I think that if we get treated like a sport there’s a bigger chance that we’ll become one.”
Nancy Christiansen, team manager and member of the board for women’s lacrosse, is one of the main members trying to make the change. Christiansen says, “We as a community are trying to adhere to the OSAA rules,” but without having a representative in the school, being able to regulate GPA is proving to be a problem. "I don’t know if we even have the legal right to check up on grades.”
Sue Davis, cheerleading coach, says that activities, like cheer, are basically the same as sports as far as rules go. “We have to follow the same grade eligibility, and with state competitions, everything is the same as a regular sport.” Davis claims that club coaches are coming to check up on their students, saying, “They’re starting to crack down on clubs.” Recently, the Grant bowling team went to state, causing them to follow rules set out by the OSAA. So the question is, where do the clubs rules stop and the OSAA rules start? Davis thinks that the rules should be the same across the board, and that all clubs should have the same rules as sports.
With the switch for lacrosse from club to school sport still an estimated two years away, the team still has some problems regulating their rules. For now they’re going to have to stay in what Christiansen calls a “grey area” without the needed funding or a representative from the OSAA.
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