5 suggestions as General Assembly task force examines DIAA's effectiveness

The Delaware General Assembly, led by Sen. Nicole Poore, has commissioned a task force to study the effectiveness of the Delaware Interscholastic Athletic Association and how it can be improved.

It’s a wise and worthy endeavor, as the DIAA oversees high school and middle school sports in Delaware and operates its state high school championships.

In that important position, the DIAA must make decisions that affect many of the state’s student-athletes and their families, which sometimes can be difficult and unwelcomed.

Poore, who represents an area stretching from New Castle, through Bear down to Delaware City and Port Penn, said she gets “more calls than I care to receive in regard to the DIAA.”

Poore is the parent of student-athletes, including four-time state wrestling champ Luke Poore from Caravel. She made sports headlines in late 2016 and early 2017 when she mandated that the University of Delaware investigate possibly returning wrestling, a sport UD dropped in 1991, to its varsity sports offerings.

While many would love to see wrestling return to UD, that was, unsurprisingly, a futile endeavor considering the cost concerns and Title IX gender-equity requirements in college athletics.

This DIAA endeavor impacts many more people and is a more important mission.

“What I do know in the state of Delaware,” Poore said during last week’s first task-force meeting, “is that we are not incentivizing, nor are we attracting, nor are we delivering what we need to deliver to the athletes in the state of Delaware and their parents.”

David Baylor, hired as the DIAA’s new executive director in July, welcomed the effort, he said, “as a mechanism to help us get better at what we do.”

There are five more meetings of the task force, which includes community members, educators and those involved with school sports, through February.

Here are five topics to consider in the effort to improve the DIAA.

FIELD HOCKEY'S BEST: Coaches' votes decide Top 41 players in Delaware

Make it a nonprofit

The DIAA is an arm of the Delaware Department of Education and sometimes gets mired in that bureaucracy and its legal concerns.

That was clear during the difficult efforts to keep sports going in a restructured mode during the COVID-19 pandemic-affected 2020-21 school year.

During one particular State Board of Education hearing then, former board president Whitney Sweeney accurately described the DIAA’s task as a regulatory body was for “preserving and promoting educational significance of interscholastic athletics” in Delaware.

Sweeney referred to the state board and its legal duties being “quite different” than the DIAA’s. It seemed a rather contradictory but very revealing assessment.

Delaware, along with Maryland, are two of a few states in which its governing body for high school sports is overseen by the state Department of Education. Delaware’s is different from Maryland’s, however, in that it includes all schools, not just public.

Most state athletic organizations are operated as a non-profit funded and overseen by member schools, including the giant neighboring Pennsylvania Interscholastic Association and the Rhode Island Interscholastic League that’s more similar in size to Delaware.

The potential benefits of switching to such a nonprofit as a more effective governance structure should be closely examined.

The present setup, with the DIAA’s 19-member board of directors, made of school, district and athletic leaders plus community members, subject to Board of Education scrutiny, is not nimble enough.

Remaining under DOE scrutiny is “less important to me than the quality of the support that’s being provided to our member schools and ultimately the athletes,” said Delaware Secretary of Education Mark Holodick, who excelled as an athlete at Concord.

MAJOR MOVES: The latest Delaware high school football team rankings

Keep priorities straight

The object of high school sports is not to help someone earn an athletic scholarship to college. Very few students do and their involvement on club teams and in competitions apart from high school sports is often the impetus.

Prep teams are meant to provide a positive and educational experience in which the competition and camaraderie instill valuable lifelong lessons. They’re fun. And it wouldn’t hurt to allow a few more games in some sports.

High school students, as one task-force member pointed out, actually have a much better chance to earn college aid through their academic achievements, a fact sometimes lost in the quest for sports excellence.

Contrary to some comments made during the initial task force gathering, excelling in high school sports in Delaware is not akin to doing so on the moon. If a student-athlete is good enough, a college coach and his or her recruiters will likely find that student-athlete.

Also, as some suggested, student-athletes are not fleeing Delaware because athletic opportunities are limited here. Some may, which is fine if that’s a better option.

But many Delaware high schools – Delmar, Saint Mark’s and Salesianum come to mind, in particular – have out-of-state students enjoying their athletic undertakings and excelling to the extent they’ve earned statewide honors.

Simplify, clarify regulations

Baylor said he has spent more time studying and ruling on waiver requests of DIAA participation and other rules than any task since his July hiring. It’s also a burden for the DIAA board of directors.

Those can be difficult, time-consuming and complicated, often involving family events, health concerns and other private matters. They also frequently include time-consuming legal wrangling. Some lead to bitter disappointment for those involved as the DIAA, rightfully, attempts to maintain fairness to all.

Some of the DIAA’s many rules and regulations are “ambiguous,” Baylor said during the first task force meeting.

Those could likely be simplified to make that process smoother though it would be a time-consuming project. Matters such as eligibility, transferring and coaching out of season, which Poore is particularly interested in being made more available, are hot topics that could benefit from such clarification.

“I’m rolling up my sleeves and I’m trying to throw out some of these regulations,” Baylor said, adding it would benefit DIAA athletes and their families.

Increase the staff

The DIAA has just three full-time employees with the executive director (Baylor), the coordinator of athletic events (Angel Prinos) and an administrative assistant.

That’s not enough, especially with the increasing number of sports offerings and competitions.

With its board of directors and many sports committees, plus those for officials, sports medicine, sportsmanship and other important aspects, the DIAA depends on the dedication, interest and enthusiasm of hundreds of individuals. But those people also have important full-time jobs, such as coach or athletic director or principal.

Most of those are voluntary positions, which further enhances the need for a larger DIAA staff.

“If we get the staff, get the number of bodies that we need in that office, we should be fine,” said DIAA board of directors chairman Doug Thompson.

Don’t forget the big picture

The DIAA is not what’s wrong with high school sports in Delaware, though it could certainly be made more effective and efficient.

If state government officials truly want to make a difference, they must examine what has happened to public education, especially at the high school level, in northern New Castle County.

Extracurricular activities say a lot about how successfully an education system is operating. The numerous options high school students have to choose charter, private, parochial, military, religious and even vocational-technical schools has had a negative impact on traditional high schools and undermined their communities.

It’s evident in the small rosters and lack of competitiveness on many Blue Hen Conference teams. In a great example outside of athletics, the A.I. du Pont marching band, which once boasted well over 100 members and traveled throughout the U.S. and internationally for parades and other appearances, had nine musicians when it performed at halftime of the school’s first football game.

That should be a greater priority than the DIAA for state legislators, whether it means pouring more money into school improvement, providing better academic opportunity for high-performing students without undermining those who are less successful, giving Wilmington its high schools back instead of bussing everyone to the suburbs or consolidating districts to have fewer high schools.

Have an idea for a compelling local sports story or is there an issue that needs public scrutiny? Contact Kevin Tresolini at ktresolini@delawareonline.com and follow on Twitter @kevintresolini. Support local journalism by subscribing to delawareonline.com and our DE Game Day newsletter.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Delaware General Assembly task force led by Sen. Poore examines DIAA