At Issue: If you were king of high school sports in Georgia, what would you change?

For one day, the three were handed the keys to the high school kingdom. Here are their thoughts:

Dave Svehla, West Forsyth: “I wish that everybody would just play with the players that are in their attendance areas. There’s undue influence, and the game has filtered down from the pro level to the college level and now the college (level) to the high school (level), and we’re seeing tweets celebrating kids leaving schools. I hate the idea of all that. I understand that there are certainly situations where it’s above-board and understandable, but there’s an awful lot that are not. I know that a lot of coaches share that frustration. The rules are still the rules. Those things are not allowed by the Georgia High School Association, and I guess if they’re not allowed, then I think most coaches in Georgia would like to see a bit more enforcement of those rules, whether it’s by the coaches themselves or by the schools. … I sound like an old man who’s been in this game a long time, but there used to be something a little bit more pure about high school sports, when you played with the kids in your neighborhood and you played with the kids that grew up together. There was a camaraderie among the players and the parents and the people in the community. There are still those things in a lot of places, but I see a lot of it disappearing.”

Lenny Gregory, Gordon Central: “There’s a lot of things that have changed in the last 10 years, but I think the purity of high school football has really changed at the 7A and 6A level. But just the simplicity of high school football, which used to be a very, very simple and pure game, has been polluted. I think things trickle down from the college world and social media, and I think it has become a very self-centered game where it’s more focused on the individual rather than the purity of playing high school football and being part of the community. And just the appreciation … there’s so much expectation rather than appreciation. When you have kids walking around with personal photographers and making videos all the time and stuff like that. It’s all ‘me, me, me, look at me.” I think back 10 years ago, and that was unheard of. You stayed humble and played for your community, and it wasn’t all that stuff. What’s changed? As a coach, 10 years ago, you wouldn’t tolerate a lot of that stuff. Now you have to play into that or else you aren’t promoting the kids. Right? I am not sure how all of that impacts recruiting, taking pictures of yourself and drawing attention to yourself. I just don’t know how it plays in recruiting. I’d like to see the data on that.”

Joe Sturniolo, Westminster kicking coach: “The way we do classification. That would be that would be No. 1. And that’s in two parts. First of all, I don’t think any school representative should be on the classification committee – public, private, whatever. I think it should be strictly GHSA administration because they don’t have any bias in it. Anytime you add any school representation, there’s bias. If I was on it, I’d have a bias. … I would love to see us go to a merit-based classification system by sport, which is done in several other states. For instance, take Westminster. We have an unbelievable girls soccer team. They should probably be playing Class 7A soccer. Whereas, our boys basketball team might struggle, and our football team might struggle in Class 4A, where we are now, so they’d be somewhere in between. Our golf and tennis teams are phenomenal and should be playing as high as they could. But our wrestling team and our football team aren’t really at that level. So to say that we should be playing in the same classification in every sport, kind of doesn’t work. If you win two state championships in a row, let’s say, you move up. Our girls haven’t lost a state championship since 2014 and could compete in higher classes.”