You would think the most shocking thing about Hales Franciscan’s dance of disaster with the Illinois High School Association is that last year’s Class A state basketball champion may not get to defend its crown.
It’s not.
The most shocking thing is that it has come to this when it really didn’t have to. The most shocking thing is that except for a communication gap the size of Australia we probably wouldn’t be in this spot, with the IHSA on the verge of starting a state basketball tournament without its champ and with players perhaps doomed to sit home with broken hearts.
This, truly, is March Madness.
The craziest thing is that each side in the fiasco believes it has bent over backward to forge a solution while the other side dragged its feet.
IHSA officials say they can’t figure out why it took Hales three months to submit the paperwork the association’s Board of Directors demanded Sept. 8, when it suspended Hales from the tournament for allegedly organizing summer basketball activity in violation of an earlier board ruling.
Hales officials wonder why the IHSA waited until last Friday to request more proof the school had instituted a program to educate its staff about IHSA rules and had complied with restrictions placed on its summer basketball program. That, athletic director Sean Stalling said, left him little time to prepare his response before Monday’s IHSA board meeting, when the board kept the suspension in place.
IHSA Executive Director Marty Hickman said Friday’s call was not a request for further documentation, but rather a check to see if Hales had any other information it wanted to submit. Hickman’s implication in an interview Wednesday was that Hales’ submission was so superficial the IHSA was trying to help out by seeing if it wanted to do more.
When Hales and the IHSA can’t even agree on the nature of a single phone call, it’s little wonder we’re on the verge of a hoops catastrophe. It also makes it difficult for me to fulfill my civic duty to assign blame, but I’ll try.
First, regardless of its intent, if the IHSA was going to call Hales, it should have called a couple of days earlier to give school officials more time to react. And maybe it should have prodded the school more to begin with, even if it believes that shouldn’t be necessary.
Hales officials, on the other hand, have not been aggressive enough meeting the requirements the IHSA laid out Sept. 8. The IHSA didn’t get the school’s response until Dec. 4, which, Hickman said, didn’t give it enough time to get it on the agenda for the Dec. 8 board meeting, thereby wasting another month.
Hales also should have been bugging the IHSA starting in September about what, in detail, the school needed to do and what the IHSA thought once Hales had made its submission.
All that, of course, is history. What matters now is that Hales and the IHSA do what’s necessary to let the kids play.
Time is running out. Hickman said the IHSA will consider additional information, but that the deadline for change is Feb. 2, the day of the Class A seeding meetings.
The IHSA board won’t meet again until Feb. 17, but Hickman said it still could act on Hales’ suspension–perhaps by conference call–in time to reinstate the school.
Even if Hales and the IHSA start to communicate–really communicate–the board could decide the school committed rules violations that preclude reinstatement, but the sense here is that the Spartans can get back in if they give the IHSA what it wants.
A lot was said Monday about how Hales violated the terms of an earlier penalty by having a trainer present at games last summer. But Hickman, asked if that was a deal-breaker, talked about “the totality of what the board asked them to do.”
The message here seems clear: The IHSA believes Hales has dragged its feet throughout the process and submitted material lacking in depth and detail. The IHSA believes Hales officials haven’t taken the association and its procedures seriously, and it didn’t help when Hales’ former principal skipped the crucial Sept. 8 meeting despite an IHSA request she attend.
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“I think at a very real level there is a disappointment in the perceived effort and enthusiasm that Hales put into complying with what the board asked it to do,” Hickman said.
Rest assured Hales doesn’t agree, but that’s no longer important. What’s important is fixing this mess, and while the IHSA will look bad if it starts the tournament without its defending champion, Hales is the one with the most to lose.
Its kids not only won’t get to participate, but coach Gary London’s Spartans also are good enough to retain their title. Hales proved that Tuesday by defeating Hyde Park, one of the state’s top Class AA teams, 91-87 in overtime.
Afterward, captains Jerod Haynes and Nate Minnoy somberly chanted the same refrain: “We just want a chance to compete.”
Haynes said it would be devastating if his team’s season ends Feb. 20 with its regular-season finale against St. Francis de Sales.
“It wouldn’t be right because we know we can defend our title,” he said.
Stalling said Hales Franciscan will try to give them that chance.
“We owe it to the kids to fight this,” he said.
It’s time to start swinging.
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