Brian Hagberg
RUSSELL, Pa. – Due to a lack of participants at Youngsville, the Warren County School District Board of Directors approved a new co-op agreement between the Eagles and Warren Area High School cross country teams during a special meeting on Monday, July 31.
The co-op is for both boys’ and girls’ teams. WAHS will be the host school, with the district providing transportation to away scrimmages and meets, along with any district and state competitions. Parents and/or athletes will be responsible for providing transportation from Youngsville to practices and home meets.
Three boys and one girl had registered to compete in cross country for the Eagles this fall, according to the district.
The agreement was not discussed during the Personnel, Athletics, and Co-Curricular Activities meeting, and was passed unanimously as part of a consent agenda during the special board meeting.
GIRLS WRESTLING
The discussion began Monday night for the district to form a varsity and junior varsity wrestling program at Warren Area High School.
WCSD Director of Administrative Support Services Gary Weber said a co-op agreement will be brought before the board in August that would allow all girls’ wrestlers to compete, but that the district needs to give the go-ahead for a program to be in place before details of the co-op can be presented.
“It’s just the board has to approve us to run the program first,” Weber said. “And I think our concern is if we don’t run a girls’ program then we certainly have Title IX implications. So we want to make sure that we’re abiding by that. So I think the first step is for the board to authorize the district to run a girls’ program. And then the next steps will be how we do it.”
Board member Donna Zariczny clarified that the discussion Monday was a “philosophical” question of whether the board was ok with forming a new program.
Weber confirmed that was the case, and that “philosophical” approval allows Weber and Rick Gignac, WCSD Supervisor of District-wide Athletics and Co-Curricular Activities, to create the co-op proposal.
Weber said there would be postseason implications depending on the way the program is created, but Gignac plans to explain those nuances during the August meeting.
“There are implications when you get into playoffs if we run a co-op program that allows the girls to compete as girls and go to the playoffs as girls,” Weber said. “It gets a little bit different if we don’t do that. So I think he’s gonna be explaining that.”
If the district ultimately approves a girls’ wrestling program, it will be the seventh school-sanctioned program in District 10, joining Saegertown, Seneca, Mercer, General McLane, Reynolds, and Sharpsville.
