As it turns out, the state of Alabama didn’t need to pass a new law allowing home schoolers to participate in interscholastic sports. Just its intention to do that was enough.
Last month, the Alabama High School Athletic Association (AHSAA), which had initially been reluctant to make such a new rule, took it from there, agreeing to develop a measure that would allow home school students to participate in public high school sports by the 2016-17 school year.
“The AHSAA is doing the right thing by preparing for the inevitable,” said George Schaefer, a sports law professor at Auburn University at Montgomery. “I am surprised, but not overly surprised, as there are many home-schooled students in Alabama. The last numbers I saw was somewhere over 20,000. Sports are big here is the south and some of these home school parents probably have some pull.”
That “pull” was likely in play this spring when the Alabama House of Representatives passed a bill, dubbed the Tim Tebow Act.
Bill sponsor Rep. Mike Ball, R-Madison told the media at the time that he would rather the AHSAA embrace the concept, so there would be “no reason to issue a statute.”
The Senate Education and Youth Affairs Committee held a public hearing on the bill on May 20, which may have been the tipping point for the AHSAA. The chief objection of Executive Director Steven Savarese was that students participating on sports teams at public schools, but not enrolled in public schools, won’t count towards the school’s classification.
Those concerns seemed to melt away a bit after the committee’s meeting.
“Our central board of control has previously examined home school participation for the last three years,” Savarese told the media. “And with legislative pressure, the board felt like it was a better option to create their own bylaw than to support a bill that had some created some different standards for eligibility.”
The ultimate objective is “fair play,” and the association is in a better position to create a framework for that than the state, according to Savarese.
The bottom line is that “the AHSAA Central Board of Control commits to developing a home school bylaw allowing home schooled students the opportunity to participate in interscholastic athletics within AHSAA member schools for the 2016-17 school year,” he wrote in a letter.
Given that intent, Ball said he is happy. “This is a win-win for everyone,” he told the media.
There are other constituents, said Schaefer that may take a wait-and-see approach.
“I am not sure what the Alabama Independent School Association (AISA) will do or if it affects them at all,” he said. “They do have a note about homeschoolers. It states: HOME SCHOOL OPPONENTS: PLEASE TAKE NOTE OF THE FOLLOWING IMPORTANT PROPOSAL/POLICY: “Student-athletes transferring from a home school and/or a non-traditional school program will be eligible for AISA interscholastic athletics, if all AISA eligibility requirements have been met. AISA schools are not allowed to play home school teams in any sport.’”
