Triway spearheading effort for separate state tournaments

There appears to be another competitive balance vote for high school athletics coming in the near future.

Triway Local School District Superintendent David W. Rice said Monday that he and other superintendents in Wayne County have collected around 110 signatures from high school principals in the state of Ohio to submit to the Ohio High School Athletic Association and Commissioner Daniel B. Ross for a vote.

Rice said that a petition needs 75 signatures to proceed at the state level. A petition also needs to have at least five signatures from each of the six athletic districts that the OHSAA has set up.

The concern that Rice and others see is between the athletic competition between public and non-public schools. They want there to be public school state tournaments and non-public school state tournaments.

“This started in December of 2009 and we are trying to find a way to level the playing field,” Rice said. “Statistically, about 18 percent of the schools in the state of Ohio are private schools and of that group of schools, they win 40 percent of the tournaments [from 2000 to 2010].”

There have been two different proposals that have been brought to a vote for principals of Ohio schools in May 2011 and May 2012 and neither passed.

Rice said he expects a new proposal to be on the ballot in May 2013, as long as the signatures of the principals on the petition are verified.

“I expect those signatures to be verified and for their to be a vote in May of 2013,” Rice said.

The athletic proposal to address competitive balance in OHSAA state tournaments failed 339-301 in May 2012 and 332-303 in May 2011.

It is interesting to note that not all high school principals voted on this matter. More than 20 percent of eligible principals abstained. A majority vote is needed.

Rice is in his 13th year as Wooster’s superintendent. He worked for 10 years at Chillicothe High School and for 10 years in the Cloverleaf school system prior to his current position. He served as an industrial arts teacher and coached football, basketball and baseball at Chillicothe, and was an assistant principal at Cloverleaf High School and then an assistant superintendent in the system.