Alabama High School Athletic Association (AHSAA) Southeast District director Kevin Hawkins said he recently resigned over the association's policy of assigning officials based on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and splitting public and private school playoff competition.
Hawkins said he resigned in January.
"The final straw was that they weren't abiding by their own rules. Basically, they were picking schools to go against and not go against, and then on the officials' side, they were basically choosing officials based on diversity, you know, DEI," Hawkins told 1819 News on Monday. "They were giving more championship opportunities, more chances to get on TV and be seen, so they can further their career. It's all about trying to get these guys to further their career to get out of high school and to go to college and so forth and so on if they want to, but they're not doing that. They're basically picking and choosing certain people that shouldn't be out there to do stuff."
The policy was introduced by Ken Washington, AHSAA's director of officials, according to Hawkins.
"He feels like minorities don't get enough exposure and stuff, so he's made it a point to do it there, being from an HBCU. We're just like, 'Well, not everybody has minorities that can come in there and do it because we just don't have them in football in high school and stuff because nobody wants to do it because of the pay. You go broke doing it," Hawkins said. "He's lost several officials out of it. In this district down here in Southeast, he went from over 300 officials to probably less than 100 or 150 next year just because of what he did. So, you talk about schools moving games, oh, there's going to be a lot of them."
Hawkins continued, "That was a big part of his [Officiate Alabama] presentation, the DEI part. When he was called out about it and asked about it, he never would say anything about it, but he made it clear to all of us directors: This is what we're going to do."
"Say you had a Montgomery Catholic playing somebody in a playoff game. Say it was a predominantly black school, well he wanted to have as many black officials out there as he did white because he didn't want it to look like that he had all white officials out there. Even though some of the black officials might not have been qualified to do it or even some of the white officials might not have been qualified," Hawkins said. "He wanted to have it mixed up so some of your better officials would just get left out because he was doing that. Some of your officials that weren't ready for those games were getting put in it, and it just made it hard. That's making a big decline because what's the incentive if all you're going to do is call your normal games during the year and have no incentive to do anything in the championships? You're not getting any exposure. You're going broke, and you're getting, as I say, crapped on at the same time."
AHSAA announced on Friday that it was restructuring postseason athletics by splitting public and private school postseason competition.
The change was approved by a 13-2 vote by AHSAA central board members at a meeting on Friday morning.
Hawkins said he resigned before the vote happened because "I knew what was coming down."
"This whole private school and public school split. They've got a meeting, I think, scheduled Friday, and I see the private schools pulling away from it because it's not fair just for private schools when the public schools are the ones that are out there recruiting. I have a son who's a senior, and he was recruited by other public schools, and here I am working with the state, and I'm like, 'How are you calling my son?" [and they respond] 'Well, they ain't going to do anything to us?' That's just the mindset that the public schools have right now and it's wrong," Hawkins said. "Your private schools, they used to recruit real bad in the state. When I first came into it 20-something years ago, the private schools were bad about recruiting. The private schools stopped doing that. Now, if you want to go to a private school, you have to play multiple sports if they give you a scholarship to go there, and most kids can't play multiple sports, so they don't wind up doing that. What happened is your schools, like Thompson, started pulling from Hoover. They started pulling from Spain Park. They started pulling players in, and that's no fault of Coach Freeman. That's just he's got a brand-new high school [and] everybody wants to play for him because he's a champion. Central, of course, is pulling players out of Georgia [and] letting them play in Alabama even though they live in Georgia. We all know it. Nobody says anything. The private schools are just like, 'You're counting us 1.5 plus competitive balance because we're a private school, we don't think that's fair. We just want to be counted equal so that we can play in our own area because a school like Providence Christian here in Dothan is playing 6A volleyball, and they're a 2A school. That's not fair to them because they're winning championships because they've got better coaches because they can afford better coaches. That's not a knock on them. That's just them being a better-prepared school, and the public schools didn't like that. They wanted the private schools out… there are 90 private schools and 900 publics, and the majority won the argument. I don't think the private schools have anybody on the central board. I think it's all public school, either ADs or high school coaches. I don't think there's any private school people on the central board."
Hawkins said he opposed splitting up private and public playoff competition because he represented a rural district.
"We had the most rural area. The biggest thing for me advocating for it was all my schools are already spread out. Why are we going to make them spread out more when we're not a Montgomery or a Birmingham or Mobile, where we have 20 schools just inside the city limits? Parents are going to really hurt too because they are going to really have to travel now," Hawkins said. "There's recruiting going on with the public schools more than the private schools, but the private schools get blamed for it a lot of times. They're not really doing anything wrong except hiring better coaches. Most of your private schools have a better ratio when it comes to coaches-versus-kids. They might have 10 coaches on their staff, whereas a public school might just have four. That's not any fault of the publics, they just don't have money like the private schools have. That's another thing. Yet I don't see private schools building brand new schools like Pike Road is right now, and Gulf Shores and all these other schools are building these extravagant [facilities], I just don't see it."
AHSAA private schools are set to meet on Friday to discuss how to respond to the AHSAA board's recent vote.
"I think the only thing that's keeping [private schools] in [AHSAA] right now is the ability to play the other schools close in their area. What's the use if you're going to have to travel four or five hours to play in your region? They might as well go back to AISA because that was the whole argument: they were having to travel so much. If they go back over to AISA or they start their own association again, then they don't have to travel as much, and they can make their own choices on how they want to do it. I don't see what the benefit of being in the Alabama High School [Athletic Association] does for them anymore. It's going to be interesting, but I think a majority of them are going to leave or there's going to be a lawsuit because they just can't afford to travel as much," Hawkins said. "These public schools are going to suffer too because now you've got people, I'll take a Luverne for instance, that's got to travel two hours to their closest region foe. The gates are not going to be as high. They're not going to get people at games. So instead of making money, they're going to lose money, and they're not going to be able to travel with these buses like they have been in the past. I see it as a lose-lose. I've argued that point. They made it to be a private versus public issue, but I don't see how the board can do that when there's nobody on the board that's in a private school. I think it was just their way of getting rid of the private schools."
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