The most significant event in Hales Franciscan’s short-lived suspension from the Illinois High School Association wasn’t the game its basketball team couldn’t play Thursday night or the one it could play Friday.
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It was the meeting Hales Principal John Young and IHSA Executive Director Marty Hickman had Wednesday.
Their 1 1/2-hour chat at Hales wasn’t important because they focused on the events that led Hickman to revoke Hales’ membership Nov. 22 but rather because they didn’t.
The meeting was more diplomatic mission than investigation, which is fitting because the IHSA and Hales have at times resembled unaligned countries eyeing each other warily.
The gabfest was part get to know you and part clear the air, with each side learning more about the other’s mission, problems and perspective.
“It was very candid,” Hickman said. “It was, `Let’s communicate, let’s talk.'”
That’s crucial not only for reaching a final remedy for the current mess but also for improving relations between the two sides.
Hickman found out that life at Hales, for years a struggling South Side school for African-American males, doesn’t go as smoothly as it does in Palatine or Normal.
He found out that when you’re scratching for funds and going through administrators like a teenager goes through Doritos, the cracks things fall through are bigger than at other places.
Young found out more about the IHSA’s relations with Hales, including the school’s suspension from the 2004 Class A basketball tournament for rules violations.
“It was really kind of a conversation where I felt I was better able to understand the situation at Hales and John was better able to understand the IHSA’s involvement with Hales,” Hickman said.
It may also have helped lead to the IHSA’s decision Thursday to reinstate Hales, allowing it to resume competition against member schools. This was too late for Hales to play against Crane on Thursday night but saved its game Friday against St. Laurence, won by Hales 85-50.
Hickman suspended Hales after learning it had not had recognition from the Illinois State Board of Education, a requirement for IHSA membership, since 2003.
The ISBE has since restored Hales’ recognition, but the IHSA Board of Directors wants some questions answered and has told Hales officials to appear at the board’s Jan. 11 meeting. The board then will consider possible action, which ranges from doing nothing to taking away Hales’ 2005 state basketball title to again suspending its membership.
The questions include why the school told the IHSA it had the recognition the last two years and why it played a basketball game Nov. 22, a few hours after Hickman said he told Young that Hales couldn’t play if it didn’t have recognition status.
Young, who was not at Hales in 2003, said Friday that Hales played the game because he and others were still looking for the recognition certificate and believed it might exist. The other answers will likely take some research because a revolving door of administrators preceded Young.
Hales needs to dig deep because its fate may depend on how seriously it takes its predicament as well as what steps it shows it will take to avoid future snafus.
“I can understand the board’s saying it needs some answers, and I will give the answers I have,” Young said.
Young, 67, really doesn’t deserve all this.
He retired as Lyons Township principal in 2004 and was ready to relax until Hales lured him back into education two months later.
The school intrigued Young, and it’s easy to see why. African-American teenage males are an extremely at-risk group, and a school dedicated to teaching them values and preparing them for college is important and needs to thrive.
Young doesn’t mind the perception Hales messed up because he knows it did. What bothers him is some people’s belief it knowingly broke rules and that it is about little else than basketball.
“We’re doing everything we can to make an environment where youngsters can learn and contribute to the school and society,” he said. “I don’t know people always realize that mission.”
If there is a perception outside Chicago that Hales is a basketball factory, there is also the belief among some Hales supporters that the IHSA is on some racially motivated witch hunt against the school.
Some use Hales’ administrative turnover as an excuse for the current mess, including the year it was run by a management company, when it was Hales that hired those people. Such an approach doesn’t do justice to a school that preaches accountability to its students, and to his credit Young wants no part of it, or of charges involving race or vendettas.
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“I don’t want to be thinking someone is out to get me or get Hales and walk around with a persecution complex,” he said. “We can’t grow from that.
“I don’t believe in making excuses. I try to tell my young men what we did or did not do was not right.
“What I want Marty and the board to understand is it was not done deliberately, and every effort will be made to correct that. We’re trying to put in place a stable environment so those types of things don’t happen anymore.”
Hickman denies singling out Hales, pointing out that the current controversy stemmed from an ISBE tip, not an IHSA investigation, and that he had no choice but to suspend the school. The board, though, will have a choice of penalties.
If the IHSA can show Hales officials knew they were violating the recognition rule and didn’t care, it should probably strip the 2005 title. Otherwise some type of probation should be enough.
The board should avoid at almost all costs suspending the school from competition, which would mainly penalize kids. The recognition rule, after all, involves no real competitive advantage.
Hickman and Young deserve credit for establishing a dialogue. It gives the IHSA and Hales an opportunity to forge a productive relationship, and the board should handle that with care.
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