BY SYDNEY DAILY
The OHSAA unanimously voted to add girls’ wrestling and boys’ volleyball to school sports in the upcoming 2022-2023 school year. WHS however, is not planning on adding these two sports to the school due to cost, transportation, and issues with planning.
“It could happen down the road; the finances, transportation and practice scheduling makes it hard to prepare for, especially in such a short amount of time,” Brad Musgrave, Athletic Director at WHS said. “There are a number of things to take into consideration to get it going.”
WHS lost a great deal of money last year due to COVID-19 and cannot afford to add any new sports right now.
“Finances are a big thing, you need to plan for that, you can’t just automatically say we are having a team,” Musgrave said. “We’ve got all of these sports right now and last year I lost significant funding due to COVID-19. This was because no one was allowed to come to our games except for parents and that’s what funds all of our sports. This was such a surprise and financially right now I cannot take on new sports.”
WHS also has concerns with the amount of interest and participation in these sports.
“I am not sure what interest we would have,” Musgrave said. “Girls wrestling would be easier because they can go and be on our wrestling team right now, and so once we would see numbers growing in that area, then we can consider branching that off.”
There is also an issue with planning. WHS did not know these sports were being added and therefore did not have enough time to plan it out for the upcoming school year.
“Well number one, when you found out about it, it’s the same time every school in Ohio found out about it,” Musgrave said. “Nobody had any clue this was coming. The last two sports that have been added, the most recent one was lacrosse and then the one before that was bowling.
Everyone in Ohio knew that those sports were coming because they had been building towards those for years. There needs to be a lot of planning and forethought; it isn’t as easy as someone saying we can have boys volleyball and have no problem. It would need to take some time.”
The OHSAA also did not announce any of the rules or schedules for these sports.
“There are no rules yet, the OHSAA just said we’re going to have this sport,” Musgrave said. “How many games, how do we operate, who do we play; none of that stuff is even set up yet. They announced something that they are not prepared to have operate yet.”
Transportation is already an issue at WHS and adding new sports that require transportation would make it more difficult.
“Transportation would be another issue,” said Musgrave. “Transportation is a big problem in Ohio and actually throughout the whole country. Spring is really bad because all of the sports are outside in the spring. Volleyball would be different but we would still have to transport them.
We already have such a challenge trying to get other teams to their away events and that would just add another layer to it. Wrestling would be different since it’s in the winter and there are not as many sports in the winter. We have some school vans that the wrestlers take now.”
Students at WHS think it would be a good idea to add girls wrestling and boys volleyball.
Ryan Snyder is a senior at WHS who plays club volleyball. He feels adding this sport could give students a chance to do something new and spread awareness of the sport.
“It would spread boys volleyball as not many boys play it in the area,” Snyder said. “It could open bigger opportunities in the future for the sport at our age level.”
