TMSAA Minutes

February 16, 2005

 

The Tennessee Middle School Athletic Association held its second meeting of the school year on Wednesday, February 16, 2005, at the TSSAA office in Hermitage.  Committee members present were Vic King, Chic Nute, Mike Fulkerson, Hardin Satterfield, Mike Morrison and Norma Beshears.

 

Members of the committee approved the current membership list.  We had 10 new schools that applied for membership this year.  This brings the total number of member schools in TMSAA to 280.

 

Committee members decided on the topics they felt needed to be discussed with our Athletic Directors during the TMSAA Forum at the Athletic Directors’ Conference on April 4^th – 6^th at Opryland Hotel in Nashville.  Those topics were as follows:

 

1.     Does the TMSAA Committee need to look at classifying schools according to enrollments?

 

2.     Basketball.

 

3.     Independent Game Participation Rule

 

4.     Who TMSAA member schools may play

 

The committee looked at the possibility of realigning all member schools into small and large divisions by Areas based on eighth grade enrollment figures.  The enrollment figures that were studied are those submitted to the State Department of Education by each school in order to get their funding.  After much discussion, it became very apparent to each member that classification is a major undertaking and schools do not know all of the ramifications.  TMSAA already allows each Area of the state (Middle, East, and West) to meet and classify the schools that participate in their tournament series if they desire.  Middle and East Tennessee schools have decided to divide into small and large divisions while West Tennessee only has one class.  There is no need to classify state wide since all middle school tournament competition is held in each Area exclusively.  The committee decided to study this issue and make sure that we do something to encourage participation and not discourage it.

 

At the request of a member school administrator, the committee discussed the number of TSSAA Identification cards being given to middle schools.  At the current time, high school members are allowed ten cards per year.  TMSAA member schools are allowed four with the option of purchasing four additional cards each year.  Committee members voted to ask the TSSAA Board of Control to consider raising the number of identification cards allowed to member middle schools each year.