Features / People

The PIAA (Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association) has always been a big part of the sports at West Perry and other school districts, because they are the ones who are in charge of all the sports, who make all of the rules for the sports, and provide each and every sport with officials . The PIAA gives people all sorts of thoughts and opinions on their rules and their duties in the sports community. 

Yay or nay? 

West Perry High School’s very own principal Christopher Kasian was once an official for little league baseball through the PIAA. When Kasian was asked about his overall opinion about the PIAA through an official's point of view he said, “I think they have to have better training for officials, I think there are some really really good officials in all sports that put the time in on their own, they study on their own, they work on their own.” What Kasian is trying to get to here, is that There are a lot of officials that have to take the time on their own to study and get to know the sport. 

Kasian then continues on to say, “However, I think there is a lot of officials that are lazy that don’t know the game.” This statement is being appointed to the fact that he noticed as an official that there are officials that actually care and put in the extra effort, while there are others who decide differently and are lazy and under-taught. 

At West Perry,our Athletic Trainer, Zach Rudy, was also interviewed on this topic, and had given an opinion on PIAA as well. He had stated in his interview that, “I think they do a pretty good job, like when go to other different states, I think they do a pretty good job with balancing it all and tryna like come up with a pretty balance system that’s pretty fair for everybody” 

Zach may seem to have a different opinion about the PIAA from a different point of view. He sees them as they are good for our sports and they are a good help to making it balanced out equally among the sports. 

Someone else that was interviewed was one of our very own football coaches Robert Boden, When he was asked what his overall opinion was about the rules taht were created by PIAA, he had stated, “I think they have some good rules, bt I don’t think that they necessarily efforce the rules.” The point that Boden is attempting to reach here is that PIAA may make good rules, but they do not have a good system in enforcing them.

Overall, there are a bunch of different opinions about the topic of the PIAA. Some may like them and believe they are doing their best as a whole, and there are others who see them as lazy and don’t properly train their officials in a proper way. 

The Good ol’ boys club

Featuring back to Kasian, he had mentioned, “...they are in the good ol’ boys club, I think there's a lot of wasted time at meetings” Throughout Kasian’s interview he had kept mentioning the “good ol’ boys club” and there was a few points that were being repeated about spending time at meetings and it was mainly wasted. Further on he mentions again, “ Number one, for me to umpire in the little league world series, I didn’t want to have to be in the good ol’ boys club, number two there was just so much wasted time, I sat in meetings, it was pointless, I’m not learning anything.”

Kasian had also added on to this by saying, “For example, here’s how it goes, you take a hundred question, true or false test to become official in any sport right? That’s it.” Kasian is making a statement that PIAA does not provide their officials with enough training, and they make the qualifications for being an official too easy. 

Adding on to Kaisians point he states, “You’re taking a test on theory,” Again Kaisian mentions how the Good ol’ boys club does not do enough to know that someone is actually certified to be an official for any sport. 

Tickets for districts

This sports season PIAA had just decided that they are going to start selling the ticket for district games online. When asking Boden about his experience with the tickets being sold online he had said, “I think it's bad, I know a lot of older people that don’t know how to get tickets, and even last friday we didn’t have near the crowd we normally have.” With this Boden is pointing out that with the tickets being sold online the turn out for the games had decreased by a good bit. 

For a final interview, when Herbert Spivey was asked about how this affected him during his season he had stated about the ticket rule that, “My dad got turned away from one of the games, are latest game, because he didn’t buy one online, he had to leave.” Spivey is expressing the point that with these tickets that are being sold online, it's making it more difficult for parents and other people to access them and get one. There are so many people that do not understand the internet these days, how does PIAA accept them to know how to get a ticket online?

Coming back to Kasian, about the tickets he had made the statement that, “I think it's nonsense, what if you live in Blain, and you don’t have access to a computer?” Kasian makes an extremely valid point here in saying this because of how bad the internet is in Blain. So altogether no one believes that selling the tickets online is a smart or better idea at all.