The PIAA basketball championships are now over for another year, and again come the screams to “level the playing field.” “Something has to be done to contain the ‘non-boundary’ schools from adding to their impressive cache of championships.” It’s just not fair! Give me a break! Let’s just give everyone a gold medal and be done with it!

State Legislators (why are they even involved here — go pass tax reform or eliminate your lifetime pensions — something meaningful!) latest short-sighted solution is to pass “backward legislation” to recreate a split championships system, in place until the end of the 1971-72 season known as the PIAA and P(Catholic)IAA. This latest proposal would put the Charter schools in with the Catholic schools and now call it what? The PCCIAA Championships? They would battle for one championship, and the public schools would battle for what? A tainted ‘other’ title — you’d always know that the best team did not really win, and is that not the goal?

As a former Coach at a local Catholic non-boundary school under the current PIAA system, who ironically had 4 out of 5 seasons ended abruptly by loaded Charter schools, you would think I would gladly jump on the bandwagon to split the championships, but you would be wrong. I “was” once one of the PIAA harshest critics after each defeat, annually penning a letter chastising them forever allowing those darn “Charter” schools in.

My criticism was not so that they did recruit — even public schools recruit — but how they were allowed to recruit and freely move up and down in the divisions. For example, to bring players, already committed to D1 Colleges, who played 4A ball the first three years of their high school careers down to a Single-A team, just to win a State Title, or allowing a team who won the AA title one year, who does not lose a player to graduation, and yet the following year was allowed to move down to the Single-A tournament and win yet another title! Those abuses do need to end.

There is also something to be said for beating the best of the best, and someday, if realistic controls are put in place, it will eventually happen. As a member of a Catholic school that won a PCIAA Single A Championship in 1972 — the last of the split championships — I still, to this day, wonder if we could have beaten the public school champion from the Single-A division. I think we would have but alas we will never know, but let’s not go backward!