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CHAPEL HILL — Shortly after midnight this morning, the House of Representatives passed an insurance bill that was modified to contain updated language from Senate Bill 636; a bill that would greatly diminish the effectiveness of the North Carolina High School Athletic Association. The Association neither supports the bill, nor the manner in which our elected officials have attempted to force it through.
The NCHSAA has operated in good faith with the state legislators and the North Carolina Board of Education in accordance with the Memorandum of Understanding that was signed in 2022 and has received no such correspondence to the contrary. In fact, the staff and NCHSAA Board Members have worked closely with the leadership team of the State Board of Education in recent weeks to discuss changes to the current eligibility rules.
“Today is a dark day for high school sports in North Carolina,” said NCHSAA Commissioner Que Tucker. “This was a blindside tackle, and I am sorely disappointed in the actions of our state legislators. Any statement that would suggest that we have not honored our end of the current Memorandum of Understanding is grossly inaccurate. We have seen other state associations dismantled by their state legislatures and ultimately, legislators don’t know what they don’t know. The NCHSAA is not just an office in Chapel Hill, it is the 436 schools that make up its membership. This bill, should it become law, silences the voices of those schools.”
The NCHSAA has worked for more than 110 years to be a beacon for education-based athletics in our state and across the nation. The goals of the association have always placed student athletes and their development as future members of society as a top priority. Not only does the staff of the Association work to host premier championship events, but it also operates by a robust handbook, developed by more than a century of improvements, to safeguard fair and sportsmanlike competition.
While the Association and its officers have the utmost respect for the Department of Public Instruction and State Board of Education, it is understood that those entities have a tremendous responsibility to all students in our state and already have their plates full. The NCHSAA has a dedicated, full-time staff devoted only to the guardianship of interscholastic athletic competition, including several Certified Athletic Administrators and former public school employees. With the support of a Board of Directors, which consists of Superintendents, Principals, Athletic Directors and Coaches from every region and every classification in North Carolina, the NCHSAA believes that it has assembled the best possible team to administer high school sports in our state.
