Rumblings, rumors and just plain gossip triggered a decision – made in a private setting – that led to immediate public uproar.
At the Pasta House in Festus last week, Jefferson County school superintendents or their proxies met, not for toasted ravioli and house salad (good as they are) but to kick St. Pius X out of the Jefferson County Activities Association. With the requisite two-thirds (eight votes out of 11 schools) votes needed, they were successful. De Soto, St. Vincent and, of course, St. Pius abstained.
Within a few hours of that earth-shaking decision in local prep sports, the Leader reported it on our website and social media. When I last checked, there were 675 comments and 175 shares on Facebook. Instead of the usual vitriol that accompanies such controversial stories, with the two sides a mile apart, most of the comments I read were thoughtful and many drew from personal experiences as an athlete at public or private schools. That’s how social media is used the right way.
There is more to learn about the mechanics of this raw deal for St. Pius and the damage done to sportsmanship in general. Who knows how many branches we’ll hit on the way to the bottom of this story? This we do know. This didn’t happen overnight. St. Pius was put on probation by the Missouri State High School Activities Association for the 2017-2018 school year for violations surrounding the actions of a former football coach.
There may be more to this later, as well, beyond just the Lancers’ exit from the JCAA. St. Pius may go independent in football if the I-55 Conference, to which it belongs, decides to fold up the tent. (Under its constitution, the JCAA does not include football.)
Dunklin R-5 Superintendent Clint Freeman said he expects the I-55 Conference to disband. Freeman is the president of the Jefferson County superintendents group and announced the removal of Pius. Freeman also said he doesn’t expect the school districts’ sentiment on the expulsion to change anytime soon.
By the evening of the decision, Crystal City and Grandview already had pulled out of JCAA baseball games against St. Pius. I could sense the dominoes starting to topple. St. Pius activities director Tilden Watson said last week he was unsure about his school’s involvement in spring jamborees with JCAA schools.
What I question most about the decision is the timing. This would have been better dealt with in June, after the end of the school year. Pre-empting an entire spring season before it begins is counterproductive for everyone and seems more than punitive. Bad blood has been brewing for decades about whether St. Pius actively and improperly recruits student-athletes. The argument is old and can be found among the public and private schools in St. Louis, St. Charles County and well beyond our borders.
What I wanted to know, from both sides, was what brought this to a head? After interviewing Freeman and St. Pius President Jim Lehn, I get a sense that the decision was a personal one. Freeman said the final straw occurred in a Feb. 12 meeting with superintendents when Lehn presented a list of unverified violations allegedly committed by JCAA public schools.
Lehn said he’s reached out to the county’s superintendents and taken part in meetings with them, and that he’s constantly treated like a rogue – which led him to come up with his list. He added that he believes the JCAA’s action is more of an attack against faith and St. Pius itself.
“Our moral compass here is driven and developed by the Bible,” Lehn said the day after being given the boot. “Athletics is an extra-curricular activity.”
One of the planks the JCAA used to kick out St. Pius was its proximity to the public schools in the area. Obviously, St. Vincent is a private Catholic school, but since it’s in Perryville, the members of the JCAA who did the kicking are forgetting that there’s a public high school (and league member) in that town, too.
“We’re the only private Catholic school for 31 miles,” Lehn said. “I have nine public schools around me. We’re a college prep school. Our average ACT is 23.3; 96 percent of students get college scholarships. Our sports have gotten better and that’s caused some people out there to think about us differently, so instead of competing with us, they decide to kick us out.”
Sure, St. Pius has sent its share of teams to state competition. Since November, the Leader has sent me three times to state events to cover St. Pius teams. Its girls volleyball team is one of the top programs in the state, shown again last fall in Cape Girardeau when the Lancers finished second to incomparable Incarnate Word Academy in the Class 4 final. Last month, the St. Pius boys wrestling team sent eight qualifiers to the state tournament at the Mizzou Arena. I was back there on March 8 to watch the girls basketball team lose to Fair Grove in the Class 3 state semifinals.
Yes, St. Pius wins its share of JCAA titles, but the Lancers don’t run the score up, mostly because they can’t, and they don’t dominate the other schools in the JCAA. On the gridiron, I’ve watched Jefferson dismantle an overmatched Pius squad. The Lancer boys basketball team had a winning record this season, but was no match for the Blue Jays in the district final.
I know some of the top Lancer athletes were educated in public schools before they became freshmen, but that door swings in both directions. My hope is that in time cooler heads will prevail and eventually St. Pius will be brought back into the fold. How can we have county conferences without them? Just because they’re a private school? They’re part of this community and do a lot of great charitable work for it. The Lancer student-athletes are friends with many public-school counterparts and in some cases are related to them.
What kind of example has been set here? Not a good one.