TSSAA Legislative Council takes action on several sports in last session

In its final session of the 2023-24 school year, the TSSAA Legislative Council made several changes to the Bylaws on Tuesday morning.

The meeting featured many changes that will take form upon the fall of the 2024-25 school year from sanctioned or emerging sports, all the way down to ejections in soccer.

One of the main courses of action regarded the language to establish thresholds for sanctioning 'emerging' sports. In its approval, it was said that "a sanctioned emerging sport will be treated the same as all other TSSAA sanctioned sports, except that at state championship will not be offered. Instead, TSSAA will work to classify participating schools into districts, regions, and/or sections for a postseason invitational. All emerging sports, regardless of initial participation numbers, must go through a one-year trial period before a state championship will be added."

Once this process was completed, it led into Girls’ Flag Football being approved as a sanctioned emerging sport for 2024-25.

The Council also voted to change the Sports Calendar - allowing eight days of offseason practice during a 15-day period in the sports of Girls Volleyball and Girls Soccer and Girls and Boys Basketball (prior ot the end of the school year). "Eight days of preseason practice during a 15-day period during the school year and prior to Christmas break was approved for the sports of baseball, softball, and soccer."

Another proposal approved was a proposal from Science Hill High School to allow boys and girls basketball to play in three tournaments during the regular season.

Science Hill Athletic Director, Keith Turner, who also happens to be on the Council was there and discussed how this played out.

"A couple years ago, TSSAA changed the classifications and that resulted in a lot of conferences just having four teams, so it made it very difficult for a lot of schools to fill their schedules," said Turner. "And what it was doing was requiring schools to have to go long distances to fill their schedules. This will just help relieve that a little bit.

I think it's good for everyone across the state. It's good, it's fair, and it fits the academic calendar. An example of that is you could play in a Thanksgiving tournament where you wouldn't have to miss a whole lot of school even if you went out of town. You could do one prior to Christmas and one after Christmas without having to miss much school. So that was very important.

The rest of the approved changes per the TSSAA website:

The Council approved to increase each Non-faculty Coach Registration fee by $25. Current fees are $50 per high school coach and $25 per middle school coach. They also voted to increase the fine for a coach ejection to $500 for first offense and $1000 for second offense.

A change regarding ejections in soccer was approved so that players who are disqualified from the contest for receiving his/her second yellow card will now result in a one-game suspension.