Sometimes, when I speak with sources for a story, they’ll tell me something that blows my mind.
And I’m not talking about something that’s mind-blowingly good but rather something that makes me think, “I really wish I was a fly on the wall when this idea was pitched.”
I had that precise thought while I was researching the Plant City girls golf story (see story above). My phone call to the FHSAA was rather … enlightening.
As I received answers, I found flaws. Flaws in the foundation, right where you absolutely can’t have them. It’s not a good look for the FHSAA, just as the story about the possible set-up does not make Venice High School look good.
How can a governing organization trust a program to be a fair host to its regional rivals, especially with a trip to states on the line? I understand all the generalizing coach-speak of sentiments such as, “The FHSAA expects all schools to compete fairly and to display integrity on and off the course.” But let’s face it: Expectations in any walk of life don’t always go unbroken.
That’s not to say that all schools couldn’t possibly be trusted with this sort of thing. We didn’t see anything like this happen during the district tournament at Riverview, most likely because Riverview runs its program properly. And, that’s great. But Riverview’s program, along with all of the other programs that have successfully hosted events, does not paint the entire picture.
What really did it for me was the moment I asked FHSAA Director of Athletics Dale Klaus about fielding the phone calls from other schools about Venice’s behavior, and he told me that the tournament director assured him that everything was fine.
Then, he let out a big sigh just before telling me the director was Venice’s head coach.
When do we sigh like that? I used to do it when I was young, and had gotten caught with my hand in the cookie jar.
And the fallout? Lady Raider Kellyanne Hurst has worked way too hard over the past four years for this. She played well all season, but her hopes for capping off her senior year with a trip to states were snatched out of her hands the minute they seemed to be tangible. But, did anyone from the Venice program have to face her and her family after everything allegedly happened?
Probably not. So, why would they care about her — or anyone from Plant City’s team?
This is why the rules need to be changed. Not only was this regional tournament unfair to Hurst, Kaylee McIntosh and the rest of the Lady Raiders program, but also it was unfair to everyone else in the tournament who had to put up with the host’s bad behavior.
The chief concern Klaus expressed to me was that the FHSAA didn’t have enough manpower to send someone out to police every tournament. So, they decided to have one of the schools in each region play host, and they would be asked to abide by FHSAA and USGA rules. That could work — but only if everyone involved plans to comply.
The concern of a host school going rogue was likely always the elephant in the room, but it’s hard not to imagine it being hidden under a rug for the sake of the quick fix. It might have been ignored for a while, but it now looks like the elephant just dumped the rug back onto the floor.
Was there no one within a 10-mile radius of FHSAA headquarters with the brains to say, “What about neutral sites?” I’ve lived in Florida long enough to know that college football is only the state’s secondary religion by a small margin, and you’d think that someone would have remembered that all bowl games are played at a neutral site with non-conference referees.
I’m not saying that we have to ship all of the teams out to Georgia or Alabama to have fair contests, but would it hurt anyone to have the kids from this region travel to a course in Polk County? Would it be so hard to have some Jacksonville teams play in Gainesville?
Everyone with authority and a soapbox will step up and say they want to prevent corruption in high school sports. But, until they take the blindfolds off, they won’t realize that corruption is practically seated beside them, smirking at the audience.
Although this is just one incident, it’s big enough to blow the problem wide open. Because something did happen, there is potential for this to happen again.