•  PIERRE - The South Dakota High School Activities Association on Tuesday approved of sending four student athletes from Marion to play for Canistota basketball team next year.
•  The move came despite a 4-2 split vote by the board and against the recommendation of the SDHSAA staff.
•  At issue was a request from the Marion School District to allow four male students--two seniors and two juniors--to play basketball for Canistota next year. Superintendent Terry Winegar explained that Marion wouldn't have enough students to field a team next year. A planned cooperative with Canistota that was to have taken effect next year was nixed when school officials found that the rules they were following in the SDHSAA handbook had a significant typographical error.
•  Forming the cooperative next year would have placed the Marion/Canistota team in class A for what school officials estimated would be only one year because of projected declining student enrollments. Canistota officials were unwilling to tackle the scheduling challenge of going to Class A for one year, only to go back to Class B the next.
•  Marion was seeking a hardship exemption to allow the students to play for Canistota next year. The following year the two schools would formally join in a basketball cooperative.
•  "The best thing for these boys is to let them play basketball at Canistota," Winegar told the board.
•  Board member Todd Trask of Wall said that Marion's request should be granted because the board had set a precedent when it allowed students from Douglas to play soccer at St. Thomas More.  The board had approved allowing four players from Douglas--three girls and a boy--to play on the St. Thomas More team without forming a cooperative because there were no other schools in the area offering soccer.
•  "We've already done that for St. Thomas More/Douglas," Trask said. "This board needs to be consistent in what we have done."
•  SDHSAA Executive Director Wayne Carney said the situations weren't similar. Earlier in the meeting, as part of its consent calendar, the board had approved a boys' basketball cooperative agreement between Marion and Freeman Academy.

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