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During its October board meeting, the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association approved, on a second reading basis, to implement a shot clock for boys' and girls' varsity and junior varsity basketball contests, beginning the 2028-2029 school year.
The shot clock must pass through one more reading at the PIAA meeting in December before it becomes official.
But following a 22-9 vote after the first reading, the shot clock appears to be a certainty after the second reading vote was one-sided.
"This vote was unanimous by the board," PIAA Executive Director Robert Lombardi said. "I think what has happened was after the first reading, a lot of the district committee chairmen went back to their people and spoke to their committee members and constituents and that was reflected in this vote. Barring any other conversation, I would think this vote would come up again in December and give everyone three years to implement this."
The PIAA was asked if perhaps its voters pushed it through a second vote before possibly challenging it as a group in December, but that notion was deemed unlikely.
"I highly doubt that it will not be unanimous for the third reading," PIAA Board President Frank Majikes said. "Everyone is in place on this, and we're moving forward. I doubt there will be a change in that unanimous vote."
The three-year period will help schools budget for it as well as officials to prepare for added responsibilities.
"That also gives us an opportunity to correspond with the states that currently have it and try to adopt a training regimen for officials," Associate Executive Director Patrick Gebhart said. "That gives us almost three years to prepare for it from an officiating standpoint. We might try and steal some of their techniques of training officials and hopefully use it in some scrimmages the next couple years and be ready for it when it is in place."
Faith-based additions
On a third and final reading, the PIAA approved the ability for students at a faith-based private school to participate in sports not offered by their school at the public school of their home school district.
That ruling has also been extended from temporarily being just for fall sports to in place for all sports and seasons.
"It was for fall sports in the immediate request, because that was the season we were in, but now after more consultation with the court, the board has expanded it to all sports," Lombardi said. "Really it's because the court stipulated if we were going to do it for fall, we were going to do it for everything."
The PIAA also addressed several questions about how the new rule will work.
If a public school requires students who participate in sports to partake in random drug testing, the students from the faith-based school seeking to compete on the team will also need to allow the testing.
"Yes they would," Lombardi said. "This gives kids the ability to be eligible. To play on that team, they have to adhere to every standard that school imposes on any of their student athletes. Whatever the standard is, as long as they are treated the same, that would apply also to random drug testing."
Students from the public school can not participate in a sport offered by the faith-based school even if their public school does not offer it unless the schools enter into an official co-op.
"They can if they enter into a co-op agreement," Lombardi said. "Otherwise the answer is no. It's one-way."
No public schools will have their classification impacted by adding students from faith-based schools, even if they are close to the number required to move up.
"Students that are participating in this provision will not be counted in the enrollment numbers," Lombardi said. "As far as monitoring it, we'll do our best to keep our hands to the fire a little bit to see how it shakes out. After the school year, we will look at what the participation numbers show us. Right now, for the fall, I'm not aware of a large number."
Faith-based schools dropping sports now that their students can play that sport for the public school will not be currently punished, though the PIAA reserved the right to revisit that.
"Not at this time," Lombardi said. "But I will say we will monitor that and see if that is actually happening. If it is, the board may revisit this and have some type of other amendment to it. But at this time, to comply with the Religious Rights Foundation, we have what we have."
Finally, if a student begins at a public school and plays for example through 10th grade at the varsity level in a sport and then transfers to a faith-based school, they can continue playing the sport at the public school with no sit-out period as long as the faith-based school does not offer that sport -- because technically they are not considered a transfer.
"The transfer of a student from one school to another where a student maintains eligibility for the same team doesn't meet the definition of transfer," Associate Executive Director Mark Byers said. "Currently our definition of a transfer is that it occurs in any situation where a student seeks eligibility to compete in interscholastic athletics at a school other than the one in which the student was enrolled or otherwise eligible. In this instance, the student maintains eligibility, so using Tyrone Christian (Academy) as an example, this football player would be treated as if there was no transfer because they maintained eligibility for the same sport. But if they wrestled at Tyrone Area High School and sought eligibility to wrestle at Tyrone Christian, you have a different answer (because TCA sponsors PIAA wrestling)."
Change denied
At the summer PIAA board meeting, a motion was proposed to remove feeder schools from the bylaws, but after the motion was tabled at the next meeting, the board denied the prior motion to remove the language pertaining to feeder schools during the October meeting.