CHARLESTON, WV (LOOTPRESS) – West Virginia Governor Jim Justice gave an administrative briefing on Wednesday during which a number of issues were addressed including medical and economic updates, as well as the issue of sportsmanship for teams throughout the state.
Governor Justice fielded a query during Wednesday’s briefing regarding the “numerous blowouts” seen across the state in football games which took place over the weekend, including a loss taken by West Virginia University in an away game against Penn State University on Saturday.
The primary focus of the governor’s comments regarding sportsmanship, however, were in reference to team sports at the respective levels of high school, middle school, and elementary school-aged athletes.
“I am concerned and I’m telling all coaches across our state right now…Let all your kids play, and let them play a lot, and absolutely teach these kids good principles,” said Governor Justice, propounding the importance of instilling values and principles in young players as opposed to operating teams simply as a means of accumulating victories, while alluding to his own time spent as a coach to young athletes.
“I believe with all in me, if I can’t bring more to the table than a win or a loss or teaching some kid how to dribble a basketball… if I’m with those kids two or three hours a day, six days a week, then I’m not much of a coach. And when you beat somebody 95 to 6, there’s no excuse for that. There’s no excuse for that at all.”
He continued, “At the end of the day, those kids on the losing team have got to go to school tomorrow, and what are their classmates going to do? They’re going to ridicule those kids. The same thing is true from a high school football team running the score up 99 to whatever.”
The conversation then shifted to the recent passing of House Bill 2820 through the West Virginia Legislature earlier this year, a bill which the governor allowed to go into law devoid of his own signature of approval.
The bill, which went into effect on June 9th of this year, allows for HOPE scholarship recipients, students in microschools or learning pods, homeschooled students, or private school students to participate in extracurricular activities at their school or at local public schools.
Governor Justice has long expressed concerns with the legislation, noting the likelihood of the law being utilized inappropriately for the “stacking” of what he referred to as “super teams” on Wednesday.
“We’ve got to revisit this, because all we’re going to end up doing is having five or seven or whatever super teams in the state and we’re going to destroy high school sports all across the state if we don’t watch out what we’re doing,” he said, echoing a statement released from the Governor’s Office upon the passage of HB2820 which stated in part,
“The extra provision in this bill which allows all public-school students to transfer schools and retain athletic eligibility one time during their four years of high school is something I have a big problem with. Allowing student athletes to transfer to any school whatsoever with no purpose other than jumping to a better athletic team will do nothing but make a few teams better at the expense of all the others.”
The briefing closed with an appeal to the Legislature to revisit the issue, with the Governor asserting,
“Legislature, we have got to bring everybody back to where we have some level of parity across our entire state or we’re going to end up with four or five superpower type teams.”