School board: Player a ‘safety concern’

A high school volleyball player hits the ball with enough force that the Cherokee County Board of Education has declared it a student-athlete “safety issue” and called off all remaining games against her team.

The matter was brought before the board due in part to parents’ concerns about whether or not the athlete in question was born biologically female. Following an emergency closed-session meeting on Sept. 21, the board voted 5-1 to ask Highlands High School to cancel three remaining volleyball games against Cherokee County high schools this season.

Board member Jeff Tatham confirmed that a player for Hiwassee Dam High School was injured when a ball struck her in the forehead during a recent volleyball match against the Highlanders, leading to fears about student-athletes’ safety. Both he and vice chair Jeff Martin also acknowledged that the majority of the board felt the Highlanders player presents a “competitive advantage issue.”

“The biggest thing for us, especially after seeing the video of the injury, we felt very strongly that it was a safety concern,” Tatham said. “I think most of the board members also felt like there’s a competitive advantage issue. This has been going on for three or four years now within our conference.”

Tatham said the board never felt compelled to “make any sort of issue of it” prior to the injury sustained by the Hiwassee Dam player. The Lady Eagles’ player is suffering from ongoing concussion symptoms, including vision issues, and has not yet been cleared to play again by her primary care physician or a
neurologist.

“The competitive advantage issue certainly has to come up in any scenario with that type of transgender conversion, per se,” Martin said. “I can tell you that the board wasn’t searching out this kind of thing. It was brought to our attention based on safety concerns.

Martin clarified that he does not know detailed personal information about the student-athlete in question. Tatham said the board “didn’t do too much digging on those things,” and likely could not have obtained such information even if members tried.

“I think it’s inappropriate for us to discuss that particular individual’s genetics or what have you in the context of where we are here,” Martin said. “That brings it into a different realm of an issue.”

Martin acknowledged this is, to his knowledge, an unprecedented move for Cherokee County Schools to cancel any game due to a “safety issue” caused by an opposing player’s abilities. Asked if the situation would have unfolded the same way if the student-athlete in question was known to have been born biologically female, Martin said that wasn’t the case.

“That wouldn’t be accurate at all,” he said. “I think that’s the reason it was brought to the board’s attention, but that’s all I’m going to go into that. It’s sort of irrelevant, and it’s inappropriate, for me to comment when I don’t know the exact genetic makeup of the current individual, and that’s not for us to be discussing in a public matter.”

Tatham said the board “acted with what we knew to be the case” in making its decision.

“The board, of which I am not a voting member, felt it was very important to do that,” Cherokee County Schools Superintendent Jeana Conley said. “We did have a student who, in a prior competition with (Highlands), has received a concussion and has had to have several neurology visits, and their medical journey is not over yet.

“So, that kind of spawned discussions about safety with the board. It was important to school board members, specifically Jeff Tatham and James Ellis and Dr. Jeff Martin, that the board be the one to take the decision off the shoulders of the schools – even though some students at a couple of the schools were really adamant that they wanted to play, and the coaches at Murphy were adamant that they wanted to play.”

Conley said Martin, Tatham, Ellis, Joe Wood and Joey Shore voted in favor of the move, while Keesha Curtis voted against it on the grounds that she thought the decision should be left up to each team or school. Board Chair Arnold Mathews was not present at the meeting.

Highlands agreed to the board’s request to cancel the remaining games against Cherokee County Schools. The Highlanders sit two games below .500 this year with a 6-8 record, according to MaxPreps.com. They lost to Murphy 3-0 in the opening game of the season, but later defeated Hiwassee Dam and Andrews, both 3-0, in early September.

Each Cherokee County team was scheduled to face the Highlanders a second time this season. Andrews High School was set to play Highlands on Thursday, exactly 24 hours after the emergency board meeting. The cancellations are not expected to count as a forfeit for any of the teams.

“The primary focus of the board was to pursue this as a safety aspect,” Martin said. “As it can draw political ramifications, not to put that on individual teams, I think it was a decision made by the board in good faith to do the right thing.”

Tatham said the board had a lengthy discussion about whether or not such an injury could have happened regardless of the circumstances, or whether “this particular issue” with the Highlands player made a difference.

“You could have all sorts of hypotheticals, but we basically went on what did happen,” Tatham said.

He went on to describe the video footage of the injury as “compelling.”

“She (the Hiwassee Dam player) went up to block a spiked ball and the ball, I’ve been told it was estimated at about 70 mph,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s faster than normal, but it seemed like it was coming off very fast, abnormally, especially fast. It not only hit her in the face, then the ball came off of her face with enough force to then go back through the net.”

The average speed of a volleyball spike in men’s and women’s adult competitive play ranges from 50-70 mph, according to reference.com.

Board member Joe Wood said the perspective of a longtime coach swayed him.

“I’ll never put a child in a position to be seriously injured,” Wood said.

“I think the odds (of injury) in these non-contact sports aren’t high. But in particular, in this meeting, a coach of 40 years said they’d never seen a hit like this. That was really what sealed the decision, at least on my part.”

The N.C. High School Athletic Association makes provisions for student-athletes to compete based on gender identity. The NCHSAA handbook states, “When a student’s gender identity differs from the gender listed on the student’s certificate of birth, the Gender Identity Request Form must be submitted by the member school to the NCHSAA prior to any participation by the student under circumstances that would constitute ineligibility. The request should be based on the gender identification of that student in current school records and daily life activities in the school and community.”

Gender identity requests are brought before the NCHSAA Gender Identity Committee for consideration. The committee approves the request “if it finds that the student genuinely identifies as the gender indicated in the request.”

The NCHSAA also allows women to compete on men’s teams in cases where a school does not field a women’s team, or send an entry to the women’s state playoffs in the same sport. Andrews High re-established its soccer program this year with a co-ed team made of boys and girls.

Tatham said he felt like the board has done its due diligence in limiting any potential legal risks related to the volleyball cancellations. Cherokee County already owns tens of millions of dollars in settlement money after the board of commissioners unanimously approved a $48.5 million settlement – including $24.25 million not covered by insurance – on June 29 to resolve more than 20 remaining lawsuits stemming from past practices by the Department of Social Services. The settlement added an additional eight cents added to the county’s millage rate this year, an increase expected to last nearly a decade.

“As a board, we do feel like we have good legal representation with Campbell Shatley (attorneys at law),” Tatham said.

“We do consult with them on virtually everything. Somebody’s always there to make sure we’re within those (legal boundaries).”