NASHVILLE — For now, the two most significant rules changes to Tennessee high school sports since the public-private split more than 25 years ago will continue to wait before being officially addressed.
During its spring meeting Tuesday, for the second time in the past five months, the TSSAA's Legislative Council opted to take no action on addressing proposals concerning the transfer rule as well as the residence rule.
The council, which is responsible for setting the rules and laws the TSSAA's 400-plus member schools must abide by, agreed with the recommendation of executive director Mark Reeves to take no action on a proposal to revise the organization's transfer rules regarding student-athletes wanting to transfer from one school to another without having to either make a bonafide change of residence or lose one year of eligibility.
Currently, any student-athlete wanting to transfer would need to make a bonafide change of address — along with their family — or would be forced to sit out one calendar year from the last date they participated in an athletic event.
A growing concern raised by parents and state legislators over allowing parents and guardians to have more choice concerning where their child attends school and participates in sports was the basis for the proposed rules change. For now, however, there will be no change to the way those rules are worded and enforced.
Also, the vote on the proposed residence rule, which would impact the state's five boarding schools — including Baylor and McCallie — was tabled until the council's next meeting in December. The other three private schools which offer boarding programs are St. Andrews-Sewanee, The King's Academy and Webb School of Bell Buckle.
The proposal discussed during Tuesday's meeting calls for a rules change which would declare all students (domestic and international) who change schools after enrolling in the ninth grade to be ineligible to participate in athletics. That rule would directly target the international students — specifically Canadian athletes — who have been a part of helping either McCallie or Baylor win each of the past five Division II-AAA BlueCross Bowl football state championships.
Many of the complaints leading to the proposal have come from the large mid-state private schools since the recent run of football dominance by McCallie and Baylor. The essence of the Nashville schools' complaint is their perceived unfairness of Baylor and McCallie having the ability to bring in out-of-state players as on-campus boarders.
"This would be a major shift, particularly for boarding schools," Reeves informed the council prior to the vote.
McCallie athletic director Kenny Sholl, who is a member of the 12-person council, made a motion to table the topic until the next meeting in December to allow council members to discuss the matter further and come to a better understanding of how it would impact all schools.
That motion passed unanimously.
"We are pleased with the outcome of no action being taken," said McCallie head of school Lee Burns, who was in attendance for the meeting, along with Baylor head of school Chris Angel and athletic director Mark Price. "We were founded in 1905 as a boarding school. That's our mission, our identity and our business model. A rule like that would be a grave threat to our business model.
"We appreciate the opportunity to work with the TSSAA and other schools on a policy that's good and reasonable for all schools."
In the 27 years since Division II was formed, Baylor and McCallie have combined to claim 163 team state championships across every sport other than football. Of that total, 95 have come in boys' sports and the number would be far greater if individual titles were included.
All of those trophies — many of which were obtained with the help of student-athletes who were also boarding residents — came without much complaint from the other large private schools. However, since the two Scenic City programs began winning football titles with regularity five seasons ago, the outcry grew to the point that a call for rules change was made.
The root of this latest issue is that, although both Baylor and McCallie have had on-campus dorms that pre-date even joining the TSSAA, their recent influx of out-of-state talent — particularly the pipeline of Canadian players that began enrolling during the 2020 season when their country shut down all high school sports due to the pandemic — has created animosity among the rest of the league.
Prior to the current run by Baylor and McCallie, the large private schools from Nashville and Memphis claimed 17 consecutive football state titles. That included a nine-year stretch in which the gold ball trophy stayed within a 10-mile radius between mid-state programs Brentwood Academy, Ensworth and Montgomery Bell Academy.
At least one Nashville team has played in 24 of the 27 state title games, including 10 times in which two Nashville teams faced off, and the mid-state and Memphis schools own 21 of the 27 football championships for the large D-II league.
Knowing the Chattanooga area could not compete with the amount of talent in the much larger areas of Nashville and Memphis, the two Chattanooga large private schools began supplementing that lack of talent by adding more out-of-state and international players, which is allowed under current TSSAA rules.
However, that advantage is now being challenged and will likely be decided upon when the council reconvenes in December.
"It's very complex and would require some pretty complex rewrite of some of the existing language of our transfer policy," Reeves said. "Our membership hasn't had the opportunity to hear those and the boarding schools have not had the opportunity to speak their position in front of the membership, which we normally allow to happen before a big change.
"We're not looking to take things away as much as to make them the same for everyone. But in order to make them the same you have to offer some things that would be a pretty significant change. The timing of this has resulted in the necessity, in our opinion, to table this so that the membership can hear from both sides."
In other business on Tuesday, the council voted unanimously to add girls' flag football as a state-sanctioned sport beginning in the spring of 2025. There was also a change regarding ejections in soccer so that players who are disqualified from a contest for receiving his/her second yellow card must now sit out a one-game suspension.
A proposal to allow boys and girls basketball to play in three tournaments during the regular season was also approved.
Contact Stephen Hargis at shargis@timesfreepress.com.