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Banner file photo
A two-year-old picture of James Luster, now a junior, who is fighting to be allowed to play soccer at Nauset.
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Custodio Silva’s son, Chris, wants to be able to play tennis at Nauset. |
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Students & parents aggrieved over sports waiver denial
By Pru Sowers
Banner Staff
PROVINCETOWN — The Provincetown school system has refused to give three students who transferred to Nauset Regional High School this fall permission to play their chosen varsity sports, potentially keeping the athletes out of play for one year.
As a result, the students’ parents are furious, charging school administrators with penalizing their children for their decision to transfer out of the Provincetown school system at a time when enrollment is declining.
School administrators say they are just following rules set by the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA), which state that a high school student transferring to another school cannot play any varsity sport he or she played at their previous school for one year. The goal of the MIAA rule is to prevent larger schools from recruiting star athletes away from smaller schools.
However, the MIAA also states that if both schools agree, a student can receive a waiver and not have to sit out for a year. Nauset sent the paperwork to Provincetown School Supt. Jessica Waugh to get a waiver for James Luster, a junior who wanted to try out for the Nauset soccer team this fall, but Waugh would not sign.
In addition, when Nauset filed an appeal with the MIAA to overturn Waugh’s refusal to give Luster permission to play soccer, Provincetown High School’s athletic director, Alan Harrison, went to the hearing last month to argue against the waiver. The MIAA eventually ruled in Luster’s favor, but by then the season was almost over.
“He missed the whole season,” said his mother, Dennise Luster. “Now they’ve only got a couple of games left. It’s not right.”
Luster is the only one of the three former PHS students – the others are Chris Silva and Jon Salvador – who has taken his case to the MIAA appeals board. However, Silva and Salvador likely will face a similar hearing when their chosen sports, tennis and baseball, begin in the spring, unless Provincetown school officials relent.
“We feel PHS administration is penalizing these students for leaving,” said Custodio and Karen Silva, parents of Chris, in a letter sent to the Banner. “Never in the history of PHS has the administration not signed the necessary MIAA papers allowing students the right to try out for sports at their next school. Not only did this administration refuse to sign the paperwork, but told us, ‘if your child wants to play sports, he can come back to PHS.’”
Waugh did not return repeated calls for comment. However, Terese Nelson, chair of the Provincetown School Committee, said the school district does not sign the MIAA waivers because it would be giving away rights the small schools of Provincetown need to prevent star students and athletes from being recruited away to larger Cape Cod schools. While none of the three students currently embroiled in the controversy are considered star athletes, Nelson said signing the waiver for one student while refusing another could lead to lawsuits.
“How do you tell one parent your kid is a star and to another parent, your kid is not a star? You can set yourself up for a discrimination policy,” Nelson said, adding, “You either let all of your kids go or you let none of them go.”
All of the parents of the three students who transferred to Nauset were upset because of rumors their child had been recruited by Nauset coaches, one of the reasons Nelson said the MIAA waivers were not signed. Each of the parents denied that their son had been recruited.
“These are totally false accusations. No one from Nauset High School has ever approached us or our son. He lost 18 of 19 tennis matches. Would you try to recruit him to your tennis team?” the Silva parents said.
“We went to the superintendent before [Jon] applied to Nauset and explained why he had an interest in going to Nauset. The next thing I know the whole school is saying he was recruited. If he were recruited, either he would know about it or I would know,” said Jon Salvador, father of the younger Jon.
Alan Harrison, who took over as PHS’s athletic director in September, said he went to the October MIAA appeals board hearing for James Luster in order to follow the rules the state athletic organization had put in place.
“It didn’t have anything to do with being a star athlete or not. We just went to support the MIAA rule. Our position is we’re just backing the MIAA rule,” Harrison said.
He added that all students considering transferring out of the Provincetown school system should be made aware of the potential sports penalty.
“That student [Luster] should have been aware of that so that it could have weighed in his decision. It should have been made clear to him and all students prior to going,” Harrison said.
Dennise Luster said that the decision to transfer James and his sister, Natasha, to Nauset was made because both students wanted to go to a bigger school with more class options.
“Our only concern at that time was to do everything we could for our children to receive what they needed educationally. Now our concerns are what message is being sent to our children when such chaos surrounds them,” she said.
Mike Gradone, superintendent of the Nauset Regional School System, said this is only the second time in his history with Provincetown that a MIAA waiver has not been signed. The first time was several years ago when a female tennis athlete transferred to Nauset and wanted to continue playing. Gradone said he appealed to the MIAA at that time and won. He promised that his administration would continue to appeal the waiver refusal for any of the three former Provincetown students if they decide they want to continue to play their chosen varsity sports.
“They only get one crack at whatever their passion is in high school. Most of these kids aren’t star athletes who will play in college,” Gradone said.
psowers@provincetownbanner.com
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Nov 2nd, 2006