There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 students who participate in 19 different high school sports in Georgia in any given school year. If you are the parent or guardian of a student-athlete, you know first-hand how hard they work to develop the fitness and skills necessary to succeed in their chosen sport, all while making sure they are meeting increasingly rigorous school obligations.
You've probably spent a lot of your time helping them achieve their goals both on the field and in the classroom, whether it's by driving them to coaching sessions, practices, and games or by helping them with homework and test prep. One area where you can take an even more active role is making sure that they are and remain eligible to compete.
The Georgia High School Association (GHSA) is the organization responsible for managing high school sports in more than 465 high schools across the state. Its constitution and bylaws run for more than 100 pages and provide a comprehensive set of rules and regulations for students, coaches, and schools. While these rules and regulations are important to make sure that high school sports operate fairly and safely in Georgia, it can sometimes be hard to figure out what rules apply to your student-athletes particular situation.
This guide summarizes some of the GHSA bylaws that focus on student-athlete eligibility. If you have questions or concerns about your student-athlete's eligibility or are facing a situation where your student may lose (or has lost) eligibility, contact student-athlete attorney Joseph D. Lento for help. Joseph D. Lento has years of experience helping students and student-athletes all over the country with disciplinary and eligibility issues, and he and the Lento Law Firm Team can help you understand your student's situation, evaluate their options, and, where necessary, take appropriate action to make sure they can continue to compete.
Age-Limit and Semester-Limit Restrictions and Waiver Requests
Student-athletes are eligible to participate in high school sports in Georgia so long as they are under 19 years of age before May 1 of the year before the student wants to compete. In other words, if a high-school junior turns 19 on April 30, they won't be eligible to compete in their senior year. If they turn 19 on May 1, they will be (assuming they meet all other eligibility requirements). The GHSA does not accept appeals “related to age.”
Student-athletes have eight consecutive semesters or four consecutive years of eligibility, beginning with the ninth grade. This requirement can be waived by the GHSA Executive Director in hardship cases or by the GHSA State Executive Committee if requested by a member school. Hardship waivers require evidence that the student suffered “true hardship beyond the student's control.”
Unlike some other states, the GHSA does not allow parents or students to file appeals or waiver requests; they must be filed by the student's school. Joseph D. Lento is an experienced student-athlete attorney who understands that school administrators are often pressed for time and may resist a request from a parent or student that the school files an appeal or waiver request on the student's behalf. He also understands that if much of the work of gathering evidence and other necessary information has been done for the administrator by the student and their family, the administrator will be more willing to consider the matter.
Scholastic Eligibility Waiver Requests and Appeals
Student-athletes must earn passing grades (at least a 70) in classes that account for 2.5 Units towards graduation each semester in order to be eligible to compete during the next school semester. (This does not apply to first-semester 9th graders.) They must also meet graduation credit targets on a semester and an annual basis starting with the second semester of 9th grade. Second-semester 9th graders must have passed classes totaling 2.5 graduation units during their first semester. Thereafter, students need to continue to meet this 2.5 graduation unit per semester requirement until their last semester of 12th grade.
There is also a yearly graduation unit requirement. 10th-grade students must have earned five units towards graduation during 9th grade. 11th-grade students must have accumulated 11 units during 9th and 10th grade. 12th-grade students must have earned 17 units during their first three years.
Student-athletes who need to make up credits in order to be eligible to compete can do so in several ways. Up to two credits can be earned during summer school and counted for eligibility total purposes. In addition, students who do not have enough graduation credits in one semester of the school year to be able to compete during the next semester can earn credits in “credit recovery” or “make-up” programs, depending on the situation.
A “credit recovery” program applies when the student-athlete finishes the course but does not pass; the student then has “the opportunity to work on areas of deficiency.” A “make-up” program applies when the student did not complete a course and has received a grade of “incomplete;” the student, in this case, has the opportunity to successfully complete the course. Either of these programs must be completed by the beginning of the first semester (for summer programs) or within the first 15 school days of the second semester (for programs that happen after the first semester). If they are successfully completed on time, the student-athlete will be able to compete during the next semester.
Scholastic eligibility determinations can be appealed by the school to the GHSA Hardship Committee. Note that it is the school that must file the appeal. The Hardship Committee may grant the appeal if there is evidence that the student failed to meet the GHSA scholastic requirements “due to conditions that were beyond the control of the school, the student, and/or his parents” such that the student could not comply with the academic standard.
Because it is the school that must file the appeal requesting a hardship waiver, it's important that the school administration be convinced that the student meets the hardship waiver standards and that the administrator should take the time and effort to file the request with the GHSA Hardship Committee. This is an area where Joseph D. Lento can be extremely helpful. As an experienced student-athlete attorney, Joseph D. Lento has the experience and negotiation skills to help parents explain to busy school administrators why their student qualifies for a hardship waiver and why the school should make an effort to request one. By helping the administrator accumulate the support needed, Joseph D. Lento can make it more likely that a hardship waiver will be both requested by the school and granted by the GHSA.
School Disciplinary Defense
GHSA bylaws are clear: students who are suspended or assigned to an alternative school for disciplinary reasons are not eligible to compete in high school sports. They only become eligible once they are “physically readmitted to the classroom.”
If your student-athlete is at risk of being suspended from high school or assigned to an alternative school as a result of in-school misconduct, you should contact Joseph D. Lento to discuss your situation. Student-athlete attorney Lento has represented students involved in potentially serious disciplinary matters all over the United States at both the high school and college level. He and the Lento Law Firm Team understand how school codes of conduct operate, and they have seen first-hand how busy school administrators do not always apply the rules fairly, with potentially disastrous results for the accused student.
Many school discipline cases involve testimony from multiple and sometimes conflicting individuals, and it's not unheard of for teachers and other school personnel to hold grudges against students that can result in unfair charges, hearings, and punishments. You need someone with the experience and ability to understand when your student's rights are not being respected and to take steps to make sure that the school treats your student fairly. In addition, in many cases where potentially serious punishments are being considered, Joseph D. Lento can propose alternatives that meet both the needs of the school to maintain order and the needs of the student to continue to be part of the school and to have a clean high school record.
Discipline Defense for Behavior During Games
If a student-athlete is ejected from a game by an official, the ejection “is not reviewable or reversible.” What happens after the game depends in part on the sport. In football and in track and field, an ejected student may not participate in the next scheduled game or meet. In soccer, a student who receives two yellow cards, a red card, or is called for deliberately using their hands to prevent a goal must sit out the next game. If the red card violation is because of certain types of behavior, such as taunting, violent or abusive behavior, and the like, the student must sit out the next two games. In lacrosse, there are different penalty consequences for boys and girls, except that players who receive a red card for unsportsmanlike behavior are not eligible to play the next two games. In other sports, an ejection will result in a two-game player suspension.
There are disciplinary situations that can be appealed. In particular, if a student-athlete is accused of intentionally injuring or trying to injure or “physically confronting” a “student, coach, official, spectator, or another person” at any point before, during, or after a game, the GHSA Executive Director may permanently ban the student from competing. In these situations, the school will be allowed to appeal the Executive Director's decision.
If your student-athlete has been accused of behavior that could result in a permanent or long-term ban from competition, you need the help of an experienced student-athlete attorney if you intend to ask your student's school to present an appeal on your student's behalf. Joseph D. Lento understands how sensitive these matters can be, and he will work with you and your student to gather as much helpful evidence as possible to present to the school administrator responsible for filing appeals with the GHSA. Many times the investigations conducted of incidents that take place in the heat of competition only focus on the official's side of the story when, in fact, there may often be many witnesses and many explanations for behavior that one person may find threatening. This is evidence that should be considered before banning a student-athlete from competing for a year or more, and Joseph D. Lento can help you gather and present it to your student's school in a convincing and constructive way.
Transfer Issues When You Move
The GHSA looks closely at the circumstances involved whenever a student-athlete transfers high schools. If the student's family or guardians have moved from one “school service area” to another school service area as part of a “bona fide move,” the student-athlete “shall be immediately eligible at the new school.” The GHSA requires that all family members who were living at the old residence also move to the new residence, and it will look at a variety of factors to make sure the move satisfies the “bona fide transfer” requirements. Once in the new residence, the family must remain there for one calendar year; if the family moves again before that year is up, the student will be treated as a “migrant student,” with eligibility consequences.
A “migrant student” is a student-athlete who transfers to a new school “without a bona fide move.” In that case, the student is ineligible to compete at the varsity level for one calendar year from when the student enrolls at the new school.
In some circumstances, student-athletes who are declared to be “migrant students” may ask their school to file a hardship application on their behalf with the GHSA Hardship Committee. Here too, it is the school that must file the application, not the student or the student's family. In these kinds of situations, it makes sense to have the help of an experienced student-athlete attorney to help gather and provide the information that the school will need to submit the hardship application. Generally speaking, the less work the school administrator has to do in order to submit a compelling hardship waiver request, the more likely the administrator is to be willing to do so.
Joseph D. Lento understands how these kinds of petitions work. In the case of a ruling that a transferring student is a “migrant transfer” and must sit out a year, a successful petition will demonstrate that the reason the student is transferring is because of “hardship issues” that are “beyond the reasonable control of the persons involved.”
Be Careful About Following the Coach
A student who is transferring schools – even if it's an otherwise “bona fide” transfer – or a student entering ninth grade may be declared ineligible for one year if it's shown that the student is “following the coach.” A “following the coach” ineligibility ruling generally happens if the student has some prior experience working with the coach in question. This can happen if the student was on an out-of-school team coached by the coach; if the student hired the coach as the student's private instructor; or if the student participated in a sports camp run by the coach or the coach's school; or if the student played for a coach at one school and “followed that coach” when the coach changed schools.
A decision that a student-athlete is ineligible as a result of “following the coach” is subject to hardship appeal procedures, which generally follow the same guidelines set forth above. Here too, having student-athlete Joseph D. Lento on your team can be a great help because he and the Lento Law Firm Team can make sure you gather and present as much helpful information as possible to the school in support of your student's request that the school files an appeal with the GHSA.
Joseph D. Lento Can Help Keep Your Student Eligible
Joseph D. Lento and the Lento Law Firm Team have years of experience helping students with eligibility and disciplinary issues in high schools and colleges across the United States. Your student-athlete has worked hard to get to where they are, and you don't want to see their journey cut short. If their eligibility is at risk, whether because of an academic issue, a disciplinary allegation, or a transfer problem, contact Joseph D. Lento today at 888.535.3686 or reach out to the Lento Law Firm Team online to learn more about how they can help.
