Raleigh, N.C. — As we prepare to celebrate the start of another year, it’s worth taking time to look back at all that transpired in North Carolina high school sports in 2022.
There were big stories throughout the year — from the COVID-19 pandemic, to a worsening officials shortage, to concerns about participation. We saw some uplifting stories, inspirational stories, and some sad ones too. Records fell. Players realized their dreams at the next level. And we recognized some of the best at HighSchoolOT Honors.
Here’s the comprehensive year in review from HighSchoolOT.
For the third straight year, the COVID-19 pandemic continued to impact high school sports. In the early days of 2022, we saw schools and districts implement mitigation strategies again, including reducing spectator capacity and reinstating masks. But those changes were short-lived. Most of the pandemic-related stories in 2022 were about recovering from the impacts of the pandemic. One early positive sign was the return of the basketball state championship games to NC State and UNC for the first time since 2019.
While COVID-19 might not be in the headlines every day (thankfully) in the high school sports world, the effects are still being felt in some areas. In August, Kyle Morton caught up with the Washington County football team. The Panthers were hoping for their first full season of football since 2019 this fall. The 2020 season was pushed back to the spring of 2021 and the school district opted out of playing because of pandemic concerns. In the fall of 2021, the Panthers got five games in before their season was shut down again due to clusters of cases. Washington County did get to play a full season of football this fall though, posting a 4-8 overall record and falling to West Columbus in the first round of the state playoffs.
An announcement by the National Federation of State High School Associations in February proved to be a sign of things to come. The NFHS announced it was creating a consortium to find ways to address the shortage of officials in high school sports across the country. Data from the NFHS showed 50,000 officials had stopped officiating high school sports nationwide. That consortium was held in April, and the NFHS released a report calling for changes to behavior. Sportsmanship was a huge concern of officials, the NFHS said.
In August, Triangle Football Officials Association supervisor of officials Steve McNeill told HighSchoolOT that there was a shortage of officials that could impact the ability of some teams to play on Friday nights. It wasn’t limited to football though, in fact other sports were impacted more.
We got a better idea of just how bad the situation was in late October when the NCHSAA released some results of a survey sent to all high school sports officials across all sports in North Carolina. The survey found more than half of the officials in North Carolina considered quitting in the last two years. The number one reason officials considered quitting was the worsening sportsmanship from fans, coaches, and players. Most officials said sportsmanship today is worse than it has ever been. The survey also found compensation was a big factor driving the shortage of officials.
In November, HighSchoolOT broke the story that basketball officials in North Carolina were considering striking in January if the NCHSAA did not approve a pay raise at its board meeting in December. Days later, the board approved a 10% pay raise for all officials in all sports and eliminated a policy that resulted in officials who cover a double-header being paid less per game than officials who cover a single game. The raise was not as much as the basketball officials had asked for, so we don’t know if it will be enough to prevent a widespread strike. However, Steve Schwartz, the chair of the committee that surveyed the officials across the state, said he is hopeful it will buy the NCHSAA some time to continue working on the issues raised by officials.
For more than a year, the future of the NCHSAA was uncertain as the legislature investigated the association and filed legislation to dramatically change high school sports in North Carolina. What was eventually signed into law required the NCHSAA to enter into an agreement with the State Board of Education by Mar. 15, 2022. When March arrived, there was no agreement in place, but the developments happened quickly early in the month.
On Mar. 4, the State Board of Education announced it had approved an agreement with the NCHSAA. The agreement laid out how the NCHSAA would administer high school sports and changed the appeals process, among other things. A few days later, the NCHSAA Board of Directors said it would accept the proposed agreement from the State Board. The agreement was signed on Mar. 14.
The story didn’t end there though. In order to comply with the new agreement and state law, the NCHSAA needed the membership to approve bylaws changes on an emergency basis. Changing bylaws is no easy task and requires 75% of the full membership to vote in the affirmative, a benchmark that other amendment proposals failed to meet multiple times in previous years. However, a few weeks after announcing the bylaws changes, the membership overwhelmingly voted to approve the changes in May.
In June, the special committee setup to investigate the NCHSAA in 2021 scheduled a meeting to discuss the NCHSAA. The hearing was brief and allowed the State Board of Education an opportunity to update lawmakers on the progress. No real news came out of the hearing.
The NCHSAA will continue to operate high school sports in North Carolina for at least four more years. The current agreement with the State Board expires and will have to be renewed after that.
Before COVID-19 was even a thing, high school sports participation was declining nationwide and several sports were seeing dramatic drops, including here in North Carolina. When the pandemic hit and sports were suspected for nearly nine months, there were deep concerns about the future of high school sports. Schools reported to HighSchoolOT a dramatic decline in participation when sports resumed during the pandemic, and in the spring of 2022, those concerns were still present.
The NFHS is responsible for releasing annual sports participation data. Until this fall, we had not received any data since 2019 due to the pandemic. When the results were released this year, the numbers were not surprising, but they were alarming. According to the data, high school sports participation in North Carolina declined by 9.1% since the pandemic. NCHSAA Commissioner Que Tucker said the numbers show high school sports in North Carolina are still recovering from the pandemic.
“As we look at the participation numbers from last year, it is obvious to us that we are still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic,” Tucker said. “We believe that last year’s data indicates we may be encountering some lingering effects of the COVID-19 shortened season. Perhaps shorter seasons coupled with overlapping seasons may have contributed to a sharper decline in participation for North Carolina than we have seen in other states.”
There’s reason to believe that the 2022-2023 numbers will be better, something I wrote about at the time in an attempt to add some perspective. During the fall sports season, many schools indicated that participation was up, some even suggested they were seeing record turnout. We should get 2022-2023 participation numbers in August or September 2023.
It’s not all about the pandemic though. There are other factors impacting participation in specific sports and in specific areas. J. Mike Blake told the story of the participation struggles Union High School is witnessing in Sampson County.
There were many other big stories that came out of the NCHSAA this year, never a shortage of big news items.
In April, the NCHSAA took a big step for girls sports when the board voted unanimously to sanction girls wrestling as a sport. Girls wrestling will become an official sport in North Carolina beginning in the 2023-2024 school year. This means girls wrestling will be eligible to hold a NCHSAA state championship event instead of an invitational, which has been the case for several years. Prior to this season, there were 210 schools with at least one female wrestler and 125 schools with at least two female wrestlers. Girls wrestling becomes the first newly sanctioned sport in the NCHSAA since 2010 when lacrosse was sanctioned.
In November, the NCHSAA announced it has received a bylaw amendment proposal to change the number of classifications in the association. The bylaws currently limit the number of classifications to four, but the proposed amendment would increase that number to at least seven. The proposed changes limit the number of schools in a particular classification to 64. The proposal will go to the full membership for a vote in early 2023. The proposal needs 75% of the full membership to vote in the affirmative in order to pass. A similar proposal failed in 2020.
At its winter board meeting, the NCHSAA reviewed a proposal from the N.C. Basketball Coaches Association that would have allowed for a three-year implementation of a 35-second shot clock for high school basketball. The proposal, which was modeled after a plan in Georgia, did not make it out of committee, but it seems inevitable that a shot clock will eventually become part of high school basketball in North Carolina. The question is when.
The dual-team tennis playoffs will expand next year after a proposal from the N.C. Tennis Coaches Association was passed by the board in December. Beginning in the 2023-2024 school year, both boys and girls dual-team tennis playoffs will expand to 64 teams in 3A and 4A, and to 48 teams in 2A. The 1A playoffs will remain at 32 teams.
There will be some changes to the conferences and classification assignments in 2023. The board voted to approve a number of mid-alignment appeals from member schools. There will also be a handful of new schools joining the association in 2023.
Could the NCHSAA football state championships be moving from UNC & NC State? Perhaps at some point, but we don’t know when. NCHSAA Commissioner Que Tucker told HighSchoolOT this month that the association has had discussions with the Carolina Panthers about holding state championship events at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, and that is a move that could happen at some point. The football state championship press conferences were held at the stadium this year.
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