Newsflash

The Florida High School Athletic Association’s board of directors tabled two measures dealing with the reduction of prep sports schedules during Friday’s meeting in Orlando.

But Roger Dearing, executive director of the FHSAA and the former superintendent of the School District of Manatee County, is hopeful the association will not end up in court.

The Florida Parents for Athletic Equity, headed by three-time Olympic gold-medal swimmer Nancy Hogshead-Makar, said the schedule reductions, which were passed in April and cut varsity schedules by 20 percent and sub-varsity by 40 percent with the exclusion of football and competitive cheerleading, violate Title IX and discriminate against female prep athletes.

After the board decided to hold off on suspending the scheduling cuts for the 2009-10 season — the proposal to rescind the cuts was made by board member Jeff Malloy, athletic director at Gainesville Oak Hall — the group planned on bringing a suit forward as soon as Monday.

According to Dearing, that will not happen. “She and I stayed for an hour after the meeting and talked about finding a middle ground,” Dearing said, “without litigation.”

The scheduling cuts were made to lighten the financial burdens of athletic departments around the state. Dearing said football and cheerleading went untouched because those were the boys and girls sports that had the least amount of events.

Hogshead-Makar, a star swimmier at Jacksonville Episcopal and a member of the FHSAA Hall of Fame, said that decision lacked equity because football teams field more student-athletes than cheerleading squads. She also told The St. Petersburg Times cheerleading doesn’t have the “bells and whistles” of other prep sports around the state.

Dearing said the two sides will meet over the next 10 days with three goals in mind — to be in full compliance with Title IX, be mindful of the finances of the athletic departments around the state and stay out of court. “I’m optimistic we’ll stay out of the court,” he said. “We’re both trying to come to an amicable agreement.”

That said, Dearing said the reduced schedules need to be amended before moving forward — but the association doesn’t have to rescind the reductions, either. “We were both in agreement on that,” said Dearing, who didn’t want to go into specifics before talking with his board members.

He said an emergency board meeting will be called over the summer.

Jessica Riester-Hinkle, who coaches volleyball at Manatee High and was a standout player at Tampa Berkeley Prep, was upset her team lost five games from its schedule. But she didn’t think the scheduling cuts were unfair to just girls. “People have to fight for what they believe in,” she said. “But for me personally, I feel I have great support here at Manatee.”

Saint Stephen’s volleyball coach Nancy Cothron knows first-hand about the benefits of Title IX — she was playing volleyball at Florida State in the 1970s when the measure was put into effect. Though she said Florida State always treated its women’s athletes well, she said after the introduction of Title IX, the volleyball team had its own trainer and was no longer packing 15 players into a bus fit for 14.

That said, Cothron believed the scheduling cuts were all about saving money. “I was more upset with losing the five games. But if this was going to save money, I’m all for it — as long as they prove it can save money. Put it on paper,” she said. “But these are the times — it’s a recession.”

JOHN LEMBO  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it