Bill that would abolish SC High School League takes step forward. The latest
A bill to break up the South Carolina High School League took another step forward on Tuesday.
The S.C. House of Representatives Education and Public Works K-12 Subcommittee approved by a 9-0 vote to move forward with bill H 4163.
The bill was expected to go before the Education and Public Works K-12 full committee on Wednesday morning but didn’t make it during the allotted time in the meeting. It will be picked up again in a meeting next week. If it passes through full committee, it will move on to the South Carolina House of Representatives.
It would need to pass the House and S.C. Senate and then be signed by Gov. Henry McMaster before it become law and go into effect.
“There is no accountability,” state Rep. Shannon Erickson, R-Beaufort, told The State after the committee meeting. “Our schools have accountability, our teachers have accountability, but there is no accountability from them (SCHSL). I think you even heard today how they do evaluations isn’t clear.”
Erickson is the one of the main proponents of the bill, and discussions for it began in 2023 during an ad hoc committee on high school athletics. The bill was officially filed March 6 and would do away with the SCHSL, which has been in place since 1913, and replace it with the S.C. High School Athletic Association.
Erickson and Rep. James Teeple, R-Charleston, took aim at the SCHSL during Tuesday’s meeting, which included testimony from SCHSL commissioner Jerome Singleton, TL Hanna High athletic director Tommy Bell and Eastside AD/wrestling coach Jack Kosmicki.
Singleton wasn’t initially on the list to speak but was asked to come forward by committee co-chair Jeff Bradley, R-Beaufort and Jasper.
Teeple had pointed remarks for Singleton, talking about a massive “leadership and cultural problem” within the SCHSL, which is a public entity but is not part of a state agency.
“I would argue culture starts at the top, and you are at the top correct?” Teeple said while talking to Singleton. “There is a massive leadership and cultural problem with this league.
“The top five people in this league, if you add them up, make over half-of-a-million dollars in pay. I don’t know if we are getting what we pay for when it comes to leadership and culture. People are talking about how it is changing and it is better now. That’s not an excuse, in my opinion. We always talk you can change culture in 30 days.
“… If things are getting better, why are we hearing about it all the time? We are hearing all the time about the issues with the league. It can’t be getting better if we are hearing about the issues all the time.”
When asked about Teeple’s remarks after the meeting, Singleton didn’t want to get into a war of words.
“That is the opinion that he gave. I can’t tell him how he thought,” Singleton said. “I gave them the history and process we use. I think we’ve got a good body in place and a good process, but we will see what happens next.”
Members on the committee don’t think the league’s structure and process are good enough. Teeple brought up a situation with a home-school golfer in the Charleston area, while Erickson was critical of the way the league recently handled the Irmo and Gray Collegiate penalties for use of ineligible players.
Both Gray Collegiate, a public charter school, and Irmo were accused of playing an ineligible player this season. The SCHSL’s executive committee voted to uphold sanctions imposed on Gray, including a playoff ban, while largely dropping sanctions against Irmo.
“I do trust leadership in the room. It wasn’t as simple as Irmo public school good, Gray charter school bad,” TL Hanna’s Bell said. “I don’t think people in the room (executive committee) make decisions like that.”
Bell was quite defensive of the league, how it handles its business and how it’s perceived in the public. While he thinks it is good to get assistance from state lawmakers, the league and its members are best to handle things on a day-to-day basis, he said.
“We have allowed for a narrative to go on for way too long that our South Carolina High School League has incompetent leadership,” Bell said. “... I hope today your group sees the change that has been in place in the High School League within the last seven or eight years. We are trying. Although we have things that we continue to work on and are not a perfect organization, we are one that is best equipped to deal with the needs of our student-athletes.”
This isn’t the first time the S.C. High School League has come under scrutiny by the state Legislature. Rep. Joe Daning, R- Berkeley, introduced a bill in 2013 to do away with the SCHSL and put it under a division of the Department of Education. That came after the Goose Creek football team was disqualified from the playoffs for playing with an ineligible player.
Under that bill, a 15-member department appointed by the superintendent of education would oversee high school sports and consist of coaches, trainers, athletic directors and principals.
That legislation never passed. But out of it, the SCHSL’s appellate panel was created to hear appeals once the league’s executive committee made a ruling.
The current bill, however, would create an 11-member board of directors that would be appointed by legislative groups. An amendment to the bill also was Tuesday that would involve an advisory board to work with the board of directors.
Another key piece of the new bill’s proposal would be a one-time transfer rule for middle-school students as well as a one-time transfer rule for high school students.
A similar rule is already happening. In March, the S.C. athletic directors approved the one-time transfer rule for middle and high school students that will go into effect July for the 2025-26 school year.
“The league continues to pivot as things change and ideas change,” Singleton said. “We made some aggressive changes of late including the one-time transfer rule that allows flexibility to transfer. We know school of choice is coming.”
This story was originally published April 22, 2025 at 8:47 PM.
