LUMBERTON — Local school and athletic officials have made it clear how they feel about House Bill 91, a proposal by the North Carolina General Assembly that would allow the state to take over governance of high school athletics and dissolve the North Carolina High School Athletic Association.

“Personally, and for the Public Schools of Robeson County and for the schools throughout the state, I think it’s a terrible decision by the legislature,” said Jerome Hunt, Public Schools of Robeson County athletic director. “At no point in time should politics ever become involved with high school athletics. I think it’s all coming down to the money part of it; the legislature thinks that the (NCHSAA) is constantly sucking money out of the high schools, and that’s not true.”

“It could be detrimental to a certain end if this is not played the correct way, or we let certain things get in the way of a true agenda of trying to look at the well-being of the kids,” said Adam Deese, Lumberton’s interim athletic director. “I think everything should be factored upon these kids and athletics. I don’t think money should be the big issue and point of anything; I think the kids should be the focal point of everything we decide. Let’s hope everybody has that same interest in mind when we come to making these — are we putting our kids first?”

The bill was approved Wednesday by the Senate Education Committee and Thursday by the Senate Finance Committee, which includes Sen. Danny Britt (R-Lumberton); The Robesonian’s efforts to reach Britt for this story were unsuccessful. The bill has to be heard by the Senate Rules Committee before being presented to the full Senate, and would also have to pass the House before reaching Gov. Roy Cooper’s desk.

The bill is authored by Republicans led by Union County Sen. Todd Johnson; it is unclear how much support the bill has in the Senate at large, or the House, or if Cooper, a Democrat, would sign it if it passes the legislature.

If the bill becomes law, the state would take control of high school athletics beginning with the 2022-23 school year after the NCHSAA has sanctioned high school athletics in the state since 1913. A 17-member board would oversee high school athletics statewide, made up of principals, superintendents, athletic directors and coaches; nine members of the board would be appointed by the governor and four each by the state house and state senate, with no requirement that every part of the state or every athletic classification be represented.

The NCHSAA’s current 18-member Board of Directors consists of principals, superintendents and athletic directors, with guaranteed representation for each geographic area and all four classifications.

“Right now, with the (NCHSAA), there’s equal representation, which means you have all the areas represented,” Red Springs Principal Jamal Campbell said. “With the new proposal, you don’t know what area will be represented from one of the others. And No. 2, politics should not be involved in high school sports. Political leaders should not be appointing who’s overseeing or who’s governing high school athletics.”

“Right now, people have a misconception about who runs the (NCHSAA),” St. Pauls Principal Jason Suggs said. “The (NCHSAA) is run by its members — the schools and the school systems run the (NCHSAA). The policies that they enforce were developed by its members, which is the schools. People are thinking that the (NCHSAA) is this big bad entity, but they only do the rules the members have put in place.”

The proposal includes the potential elimination of fines for schools that break rules (i.e. eligibility violations); the bill says a demerit system would be installed instead that would lead to nonmonetary punishments for offending schools.

“What’s that going to look like? And what is the punitive damages for somebody that goes out there and blatantly cheats?” Suggs said. “If you’ve got an ineligible player (currently), there’s a rule in place, there’s a process in place, that if you have this you’re going to get this, we know this. But if you turn around and say, you have an ineligible player but we’re not going to fine you … do you let them keep their wins? Do you let them keep their receipt money if they make the playoffs? I don’t mind the fines, because what it does is it makes everybody more accountable.”

“You’ve got to have some kind of governance and some kind of regulations for schools to follow, and if they don’t follow the rules that are set in place, then yeah, there should be some type of penalty for them,” Hunt said. “If not, there will be some coaches and some schools that will just run rampant and do whatever they want to do. And so a lot of times putting a monetary fine on what you’ve done wrong, it keeps those coaches on that straight and narrow path.”

The bill was unveiled this week after lawmakers have inquired about the finances of the NCHSAA in recent months, including a reported $41 million in assets; the NCHSAA is considered a private nonprofit organization.

“It all comes back to the money part,” Hunt said. “We know they’ve got money up there sitting in the endowment, but some of that money’s restricted, that they can only do certain things with it, and they’ve got more money sitting in the endowment that they can possibly give out to the schools; they have distributed some money throughout the state this year.”

A HighSchoolOT report Friday said the outlet polled athletic directors statewide and out of the 230 who responded — from over half the NCHSAA member schools — 86.1% said they were against HB91. An additional 8.7% said they weren’t sure if they supported the bill, while only 5.2% supported it.

“We talk amongst ourselves as far as coaches and different schools; you’ve got mixed emotions about it,” Deese said. “Some may be happy, some may be upset with it, but I think there’s a lot of uncertainty about it right now.”

Hunt has reached out to legislators to express his opinion; Suggs had not as of Thursday, but planned to.

“Right now the (NCHSAA) has a bunch of support throughout the state from school districts, ADs, coaches associations, so I don’t know, but this thing seems to be moving along pretty quick,” Hunt said. “I sent a group text to some of the senators (Thursday) morning, letting them know that Robeson County was supporting the (NCHSAA), and 30 minutes later I’m looking at a meeting and of course the (Senate) Finance Committee just passes it right along.”

While the bill outlines potential changes to high school athletics at the state level — although questions remain — it’s more uncertain what the impact would be on high school athletics at the local level — and what they would look like in the future.

“I’m not sure how it would change it (at the local level),” Hunt said. “If the legislature takes it over and they get their committee together, it’s just a matter of what kind of rules that committee puts in place that would possibly change how high school athletics looks. … I’m not exactly sure how it would affect us, but it wouldn’t be the same high school athletics that we’ve known over the last 50 years.”