By Brandon Ray
Branford High School’s new athletic eligibility requirement policy has had a positive effect so far on student-athletes, according to athletic director Jake Palluzzi.
The required policy has changed this past year and is just starting to take effect for the first quarter of this school year.
To be eligible to compete on a sports team, students are now limited to one failure in all classes. They can be granted a one time probation period where they’ll have four weeks to bring up his/her grades for the next quarter. The revised policy also requires all student-athletes to maintain a minimum 2.0 GPA for each quarter.
This will have an impact on all student-athletes since the previous requirements allowed students to compete in sports with three D’s and one F.
About a dozen student-athletes were put on the one-time probation this fall.
So far, Palluzzi said the good news is that there haven’t been any students banned from sports for the fall season.
The way this program will work is that every student who has more than one failure in all classes can go to the health room while their team practices, and use the health room as a study hall to catch up on work and improve their grades.
BHS changed its eligibility requirements for athletic students, Principal Lee Panagoulias said, because “We felt that our student athletes had the ability to meet higher academic expectations.”
“This proposal was discussed and voted by our academic standards committee, consisting of parents, students, teachers and administrators,” he said.
What do you think of the new eligibility requirements? Leave us a comment or tweet @branfordbuzz.
