Riverhead school board holds off on athletic policy
The adoption of a long-discussed policy to allow exemplary young Riverhead athletes to compete in school sports at higher levels with students typically older than them has been tabled indefinitely, the Riverhead school board announced at Tuesday night’s meeting.
The delay is due to new state education procedures that were sent to the district last week, board president Greg Meyer said. Those procedures, which rename the program the Athletic Placement Process for Intra-school Athletic Programs, may have an effect on any new policy the board wishes to adopt.
A selective classification program allows student athletes who are old enough to play junior varsity sports to join varsity teams due to exceptional ability and maturity. Riverhead’s policy, as it was written, would have allowed eighth-graders to be placed on varsity teams but would have only allowed seventh-graders to advance to the JV level.
“We have to send information back to the policy review committee and have them take a look at it … to see what the state is now implementing,” Mr. Meyer told the audience at Tuesday’s meeting.
