The Public Schools Athletic League failed at its only job — to act in the best interest of its kids.
The league thumbed its nose at the rest of New York State and the rules its teams abide by when it told South Shore’s girls’ basketball team and Wings Academy’s boys’ squad to play in the unsanctioned Dick’s High School Nationals tournament in April.
As a result, the New York State Public High Schools Athletic Association has denied both schools’ entire athletic departments interstate sanctioning for next season, which could seriously jeopardize their ability to compete against out-of-state teams.
More punishments could be on the way from the state Federation executive board, as well as the State Education Department. For now, PSAL officials sit in their ivory tower unpunished, protected by the city Department of Education and still failing to provide answers to South Shore and Wings. Athletes on the South Shore track team, who did not enjoy the national television exposure and Manhattan hotel rooms the basketball did, will suffer because of the PSAL’s decision.
Take a good look at the Dick’s decision and tell me if this was good management.
The PSAL was told by the state Federation and the NYSPHSAA in 2011 when the Murry Bergtraum girls and Boys & Girls boys played in the ESPN Rise national tournament that it was against the rules. Sanctions were proposed, but never implemented in hopes the violation would never happen again.
Four years later, the same PSAL leadership acted as if that warning shot never happened. It even got the Department of Education to declare that South Shore and Wings playing wouldn’t violate state rules, and that the teams only needed PSAL permission to compete.
“It’s fine. Go play,” the PSAL told South Shore and Wings — even after NYSPHSAA Executive Director Robert Zayas hand-delivered a letter to PSAL Executive Director Donald Douglas five days before the event spelling out the immediate consequences affecting more than the hoops teams and threatening further sanctions.
Douglas and the PSAL continued to tell South Shore and Wings to play without even the slightest warning of what awaited them if they did. Doing so would open the possibility the teams would refuse to play, and leave a big, national black eye to the PSAL. The only ones suffering now are the kids it is the league’s job to protect.
The league didn’t even have the decency to tell the schools the sanctions had come down before it became public knowledge on the state association’s website.
The PSAL’s leaders can’t plead ignorance like those at South Shore and Wings. No. They knowingly deceived the people they are paid to serve.
They patted themselves on the back for the great experience it was giving the teams, even as they were spitting in the face of their New York State colleagues, and leaving the kids to suffer the consequences.
