Class 5A 

                                      

Representative Jan Jones (R-Milton) - speaker pro tempore of the Georgia House of Representatives - has entered House Bill 801, which would amend Title 20 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, to be considered for the 2016 legislative session. This would "boost" in-state STEM students' HOPE GPAs by half a point, though not on official transcripts.

Currently, in-state students who finish with a 3.0 or above qualify for what is known as the Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally (HOPE) scholarship, which was founded in 1993 in an effort to send more students in the state of Georgia to accredited universities. GeorgiaCollege411 reports that in the time since then, the unique scholarship program has awarded over $6.4 billion to over 1.5 million students. Similarly, students who completed high school with a GPA of 3.7 or higher are awarded the Zell Miller Scholarship, which covers 90 percent of the tuition costs, compared to HOPE, which covers 70 percent.

"School is very obviously an expensive cost that most students have to endure, so there's always an incentive for in-state students to achieve and maintain HOPE or Zell. However, the requirements of the programs like this encourage getting good grades over pursuing difficult majors or programs," said second-year CHME Katie Robinson.

The HOPE Scholarship program is almost exclusively funded by the Georgia lottery. Prior to a drop in the lottery participation in 2011, the Georgia General Assembly voted to amend the HOPE Scholarship programs to no longer cover the cost of textbooks and living expenses, which explains the decrease in the contribution towards the tuitions of some.

Unfortunately, for some students, maintaining the necessary GPA's of 3.0 above for HOPE and 3.3 above for Zell Miller in a university setting is difficult.

This is the second of two parts about the pressures on sports officials in college and high school sports.

Irate high school sports fans, raised on instant replay and more willing than ever to aggressively second-guess calls against their teams, are heaping so much abuse on referees that it is becoming hard for North Carolina and other states to recruit new officials as the current group edges toward retirement.

The job has become so unattractive, national and state high school administrators say, that there are concerns about who will officiate events in the future and some state associations have discussed reducing the number of games high school teams play because of a lack of officials.

"I think the shortage of referees in high school is directly related to the level of verbal and even physical abuse that referees have experienced over the last 10 years," said Shaun Tyrance, a sports psychologist based in Charlotte.

"Athletes feel a tremendous amount of pressure to perform so they can get a college scholarship. Athletes view referees as (a) potential barrier to fulfilling their dreams."

Finding good officials has been difficult since ball first met bat and Mark Dreibelbis, an assistant commissioner of the North Carolina High School Athletic Association and supervisor of its officials, fears fan behavior is scaring potential officials away.

"We have fans who believe they can pay their $7 and get the right to be abusive and rude to officials, coaches and players," Dreibelbis said. "Some fans think they can do or say anything."

Barry Mano, the president of the National Association of Sports Officials, said spectators are accustomed to seeing calls on the professional and college level being reviewed on instant replay and the calls being changed.

"There is no replay in high school," he said. "The fans assume close calls are always wrong." Read more...

The games end, everybody involved takes a breath, and soon enough, the GHSA and officials from the Macon Coliseum go through notes and review the recent state basketball finals.

And a month or so later, they gather together and talk about how things went.

That's the routine. Except for this year.

The week after the state finals has been unlike any other week after the state finals as coaches, fans, players and politicians react to the championships being played with the baskets being located a foot away from where they should have been.

GHSA executive director Gary Phillips could only chuckle wearily when asked if he had any idea how many emails and phone calls he has received.

"Man, I have no idea," he said Friday. "I wouldn't even try to guess. There have been a number of things, yes. We completely understand. Nobody in their wildest dreams would have imagined anything like this."

There is a faction that wants some sort of action immediately, although the process involved in the tournament review and planning for next year's event remains basically the same. Phillips said Friday that the meeting with Coliseum officials won't be until April or May, since the spring is the busiest sports season with baseball, boys and girls soccer, boys and girls golf, boys and girls tennis and boys and girls track and field.

Phillips said he and associate director Ernie Yarbrough take notes, and everything they have -- from the goals to facility improvements to security to cell phone reception in the building, etc. -- will be addressed in that meeting.

The GHSA also will prepare for its regular spring executive committee meeting, and that agenda includes a major adjustment for the 2016-17 school year: yet another classification. The GHSA will have seven classifications and eight championships in team sports, adding Class 7A and continuing with a public and private school playoff split in Class A.

So the organization has to come up with a championship plan and schedule for every sport, thanks to that seventh class.

The basketball tournament is already a more difficult logistical issue than most sports, and the additional class only adds to the planning. What that means for the tournament at the Coliseum is unknown. Lost in much of the emotional reaction to the mistakes made last week is what the GHSA faces with the basketball tournament: a lack of options.

The tournament isn't a huge financial windfall for the host, and the state has a mix of municipal facilities, like the Coliseum, but some have no basketball configuration. Others, the ones mentioned the most, are substantially more expensive than the Coliseum and have scheduling issues with when the tournament is played.

And few college facilities in the state are not big enough to host all the finals.

"The college campuses work good for the sectional semifinal settings that we have," Phillips said. "The schools are more spread out. The fans' travel to those sites is different than the finals."

Last week's controversy notwithstanding, the GHSA has to schedule 16 championship games, amid the desire from Atlanta-area schools to have everything in Atlanta while other schools around the state want nothing held in Atlanta. The goal situation appears to have hurt Macon's standing with those non-Atlanta schools.

But, as Phillips and Yarbrough note, the basketball plan is limited. There are only six facilities in the state that have a basketball configuration and can hold at least 8,000, about an unofficial minimum.

Among the possible schedule options next year are four days of four games or four games on Thursday and six on Friday and Saturday.  Read more...

Allatoona High School in Acworth played for and won the AAAAA championship last December, one month after school leaders received a signed complaint alleging two of their best players did not live in Cobb County.

The FOX 5 I-Team obtained a copy of the email with the names of the students blacked out. We confirmed the two players mentioned were starting all-state safety Juanyea Tarver and starting all-state tailback Russell Halimon.     

Cobb Director of athletics Steve Jones replied by calling them "old allegations" and wrote "The admin(istration) at Allatoona are aware and said they have looked into this."

Case closed. And according to Georgia High School Association executive committee member Dave Hunter, there is nothing else state regulators can do.

"It's up to them to investigate themselves?" FOX 5 I-Team reporter Randy Travis asked Hunter.

"The GHSA has no way of knowing where that person lives because the local school admitted him into school," he answered.

Randy: Let's say someone got into school in the 9th grade, using an address that wasn't accurate. As far as GHSA is concerned, they're still legal?

Hunter: That's his home school.

Randy: Even if they didn't have a proper address in the first place.

Hunter: That's correct. That was the school's responsibility.

And that has always been the way it works. Even if a parent lied about their address to get their student into a certain school district, as long as the student was admitted to the 9th grade there are no state rules barring them from continuing to attend and play sports there. The state relies on the local school districts to do the heavy lifting of enforcing their residency rules and removing ineligible students.

The question: how seriously did Cobb County take the complaints involving Tarver and Halimon?

The families of both players told the FOX 5 I-Team they really do live in Cobb County and have for years. But every time the FOX 5 I-Team randomly checked two Paulding County addresses, we saw each player there. Five different times. That even included leaving those Paulding County homes in the morning on a school day. Read more...