District considers new sports policy

At a meeting last week, the Rockville Centre Board of Education began discussing changes to a policy that could allow select middle school students to play sports on high school teams.

The policy, which is still in early stages and may not necessarily be implemented, outlines how students in 7th or 8th grade could “play up” and join a team at South Side High School, so long as they meet certain physical and other requirements.

The original policy, as Superintendent Dr. William Johnson explained, was restrictive and made it difficult for middle school students to play up. “In recent years, there have been one or two cases that have come up that the board felt the policy was more restrictive than it needed to be, and asked me to go back recently to take a look at it and possibly come up with another way of writing it so that it would be a little bit more flexible,” Johnson said.

There are certain instances already where middle school students play on high school teams, but that only happens when the sport isn’t played in the middle school. For example, middle school golfers play on the high school team, as do swimmers.

The changes to the sports policy would permit qualified middle schoolers to play on any high school team, not just those that the middle school doesn’t have. “The intent of this program is to provide for students in grades 7 through 12 to safely participate at an appropriate level of competition based upon readiness rather than age and grade,” the policy changes read. “Students do not mature at the same rate and there can be a tremendous range of developmental differences between students of the same age.”

The caveat to letting students play up, Johnson said, is that a middle schooler would never take the place of a high school athlete, no matter how good the middle school student was.

“We have to protect the rights of the high school kids who want to play a sport and, quite frankly, may not be as good as someone in the seventh or eighth grade, but have a right to play because they’re good enough to play the sport,” Johnson said. “So the seventh or eighth grade kid will someday have the chance to play, but why should we take the chance away from someone who is of age and would otherwise be on the team were it not for that other kid?”

The policy will continue to be reviewed at future Board of Education meetings, and will likely not be passed, if it is, until 2014. The next meeting is scheduled for Dec. 11 at the high school at 7:30 p.m.