DATE: Thursday, November 13, 1997           TAG: 9711130701

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: TOM ROBINSON

                                            LENGTH:   63 lines

CHURCHLAND MADE TOUGH - AND CORRECT - DECISION

What has happened at Churchland High School is a shame.

Not shameful. A shame.

It is regrettable when six football players, on the eve of their school's first playoff game in 21 years, are declared academically ineligible because they finished their first grading period with less than a 2.0, or C, average.

It is unfortunate. And it is obviously unfavorable for Churchland as it prepares to play Booker T. Washington in the first round of the Division 5 state playoffs Friday night.

What it is not, however, is unfair, though it might seem so on many levels.

Why hammer the Truckers now, when they've worked so long and hard for this moment? Why hurt Churchland when its opponent from Norfolk, which is phasing in the same 2.0 eligibility rule, has looser academic standards?

How do we know that six or more Booker T. players, under their present guidelines, wouldn't be ineligible too if Norfolk issued grades every nine weeks as Portsmouth does rather than at the semester's end in January?

All are valid, human reactions to what has happened. You feel sorry that the failings of six could alter the fate of 30-some teammates who made their grades.

You feel compassion for any of the six who tried, really tried, to do average schoolwork but could not. You hope that they are counseled, and, with their sports privileges temporarily removed, that their disillusion is not debilitating.

It's also a shame, again, that Friday's game has been tainted, in that Booker T. Washington won't get full credit if it wins and Churchland has a handy crutch if it loses.

But after the anger and disappointment clear, after the kids cry and the parents rage, two things emerge tall and true out of this: Churchland High School and the Portsmouth school district. Simply because they have done something that was once regarded as elementary - announced clear, reasonable rules over time and then enforced them.

Why should that seem extraordinary?

The 2.0 minimum, reminds Portsmouth school board president David Joyner, ``was phased in over three or four years. It wasn't just dropped on them all of a sudden.''

Since it was fully implemented last year, Joyner said, ``there's been very little complaint or discussion about it. It seemed as if it had become accepted practice and one the people were getting used to.''

Portsmouth and Suffolk were the first area districts to adopt the rule that toughens the Virginia High School League's extracurricular eligibility standard of passing five classes. Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake have also endorsed the 2.0 rule and are in various phase-in stages.

``I wouldn't consider it harsh. I consider it realistic. Achievable,'' said Joyner, an education professor at Old Dominion. ``The (Churchland) situation is unfortunate. You can't ever tell when you're going to have a contender. When you do, the shoe pinches even harder. But I don't know anything we can do about it at this point.''

Short of rescinding or modifying the rule, there is nothing to do but hope the message is heard and heeded throughout the area.

The irony is that most athletes, as part of the enduring value of playing sports, learn early that uncompromising standards are vital to competitive success.

This is what has been reinforced in Portsmouth, not that what happened should be celebrated. It should, however, be respected for the lasting life-lesson that it is.

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