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Principals made right move for athletes

Remember your high school years? Remember your decision-making abilities, and how little you understood about what the future might hold? Fortunately, it seems as though Ohio’s high school principals remember them, too, perhaps helped along by their daily exposure to the ups and downs of life as a teenager.

According to the Ohio High School Athletics Association, those same principals voted down — 538-254 — a referendum that would have allowed high school athletes to be paid for their name, image and likeness.

“It’s a democratic process. Obviously it got voted way down and I like it the way it is,” Reynoldsburg, Ohio, athletic director and girls basketball coach Jack Purtell told WCMH in Columbus. “Our principals still run the show. I think they have kids’ best interests at heart and what’s best for everybody and I’m good with that.”

It is the right decision. It protects kids, and these are, still, kids, just a little bit longer before a few of them are thrown into the world of college athletics. Allowing them to sign deals might have opened them up to exploitation not even the smartest and most savvy student-athlete would have been able to fend off or endure.

WCMH spoke with Tayvion Galloway, a top-ranked tight end from Chillicothe who will graduate in 2024.

“I was hoping that it would go through but it’s not a big worry to me,” Galloway said. “I’m just going to continue to keep playing football and keep grinding till I get to college.”

Good for him. That’s where these kids should be focused, working hard, and making it to the next step. Ohio’s high school principals did them a big favor by ensuring they will be able to do so without potentially damaging distractions.

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