Saddlebrook tennis, golf can continue play at state
By GREG AUMAN
Published June 18, 2003
WESLEY CHAPEL - Four sports, it turns out, will be enough for Saddlebrook to continue competing for state titles in tennis and golf.
The Florida High School Activities Association's board of directors voted Friday to amend a policy that would have required schools to field at least one "team sport" in each athletic season to be eligible for postseason competition.
As a result, Saddlebrook's golf and tennis teams are enough to meet the FHSAA requirements for the fall and spring seasons, and the Spartans will add boys teams in basketball and soccer this winter to fulfill that season's requirement.
"I'm thinking we can be fairly competitive in soccer," athletic director Lester Bouchard said, noting that some of the school's top athletes come from South America, where the sport thrives. "Basketball is going to be a struggle."
For months Saddlebrook feared it would have to add additional sports, such as fall soccer and baseball, after the FHSAA's board of directors changed an amendment after it was approved for the association's by-laws.
The board has the right to "interpret" amendments, according to FHSAA policy, but Bouchard said the changes, which were much more demanding of one-sport and two-sport academies such as Saddlebrook, went beyond the intended leeway.
"When the board rewrote it, it was not with the original intent that was voted on," he said.
Saddlebrook headmaster Stephen Robinson lobbied his cause at an FHSAA general assembly meeting in March, sponsoring a proposal seeking that the amendment revert to the language it was originally presented with, but his proposal was voted down, leaving the Spartans worried they'd be outfitting world-renowned tennis players with batting gloves.
Bouchard said he believed the threat of legal action against the FHSAA for the alterations to the amendment may have played a role in the board's decision to go back to its original restrictions. He said Saddlebrook made no such threats.
The new teams will be required to keep only an eight-game schedule to meet the FHSAA minimum, and both can be boys teams because Saddlebrook, as a private school, is not bound to gender-equity guidelines, Bouchard said.
The new teams' will allow the Spartans to continue to challenge for state titles in golf and tennis. Their success in those sports was enough to make Saddlebrook the top school in all of Pasco, Hernando and Citrus counties in the Times' 2002-03 all-sports standings.
