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Kudos to PIAA officials for seeing the light!  Better late than never.

PIAA backs criminal checks for new school sports officials
Friday, October 03, 2008

MECHANICSBURG, Pa. — All new athletic officials in Pennsylvania will have to undergo criminal background checks under a proposal approved unanimously today in an initial vote by the state’s high school sports regulatory authority.

In a second vote, the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association’s board ordered its staff to create a long-term plan that could lead to implementation of phased-in background checks on all of the state’s 13,700 officials.

The proposals were in response to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette investigation which found dozens of current and former athletic officials in the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League continued to work contests despite being convicted of child molestation and pornography charges, gambling offenses, and drug, gun and other crimes.

The proposal for requiring background checks for new officials as early as February 2009 must undergo two more votes that will conclude in January 2009.

Previous blog posts:

Pittsburgh Newspaper Reports Sports Officials Have Criminal Records

UPDATE: Proposed Legislation May Require Background Checks For PIAA

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The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette launched a 9-month investigation into the backgrounds of registered Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletics Association (PIAA) referees and can you guess what they found?  They discovered “dozens of officials had convictions involving child pornography, molestation charges, drug offenses and assaults, among other offenses.”  Surprising?  No.  Why you ask?  Because there are still so many organizations out there that haven’t jumped on the background check band wagon as evidenced by the stories you read on our blog every day.  But I’ll tell you what is surprising.  The fact that PIAA representatives are quoted as saying they are generally satisfied with the process they have in place - that process being relying on those applying to officiate the sporting events to disclose their past criminal history.  Our own Kevin Bachman wrote about background checks in Youth Sports and wasn’t happy with what he saw.

To be honest, I really hope that process works out for them in the end.  But the odds of that occurring are slim.  Because all it will take will be one incident, one allegation and that process they are so satisfied with will be blown completely out of the water.  And what will they have to show for it?  A quote on the record stating they were “satisfied” with their current process even though this newspaper proved their so-called process was flawed and a sore backside from kicking themselves for their foolishness.

Click here to read “Report Finds Dozens of PIAA Officials With Criminal Backgrounds”

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