BY WIL CREWS
SPORTSCREWS@OPELIKAOBSERVER.COM
LEE COUNTY —
Alabama High School Athletic Association (AHSAA) Executive Director Alvin Briggs kicked off the sixth annual East Alabama High School Media Days at the Bottling Plant Event Center in Opelika on Tuesday.
Briggs, who is going into his third year in the position of executive director, opened the event with an update on the status of the AHSAA.
“Fall season is here upon us,” Briggs said. “We are excited for the new year. You can see the excitement in the coaches. And that’s what we like.”
Briggs previewed the AHSAA’s annual board meeting on Wednesday, July 26, and detailed some things that he hopes would be accomplished like revenue sharing and the sanctioning of two new sports.
“We are going to ask the board to again appropriate $2.1 million to share back to our schools, which will give us a little bit more than $23 million that we have given back in the last 12 years,” he said. “That’s exciting for our association that we are able to give back.
“We have a chance to sanction girls wrestling with two different divisions. Also we will have the chance to ask the board to sanction girls flag football with two divisions. We have piloted it for the last two years, this will be the last year we will pilot through the Atlanta Falcons and Nike. And like our other sports that we have brought on board, e-sports and bowling, they have all went off like wildfire. We are excited about having those come aboard.”
Briggs said that despite the fear of girls’ flag football taking away members of other fall female sports like volleyball, he has been pleased with the success that the state’s programs have seen since the sport was instituted a couple years ago.
“Once we sanction it, it’s just going to implode,” Briggs said of girls’ flag football. “We are in a part of the country where football is exciting to everybody. And its given the young females a chance to participate.”
Briggs went on to note that teams who held no spring football practice can begin practice July 31. The next week, all fall sports will officially start. Additionally, Briggs said the AHSAA’s policies on transfers have not been changed or affected by the NCAA’s new Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) rules.
“We believe in community-based educational athletics and that’s what we are going to support. That has been a mainstay to AHSAA way before I was born so we are going to continue that format.”
Briggs reiterated that the AHSAA will remain true to its contracts to play its state championship Super 7 series in a three community rotation, Auburn, Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, through 2032. And lastly, the executive director reflected on his first three years in the role and expressed his optimism for where the future of the AHSAA is headed.
“It’s been exciting,” he said. “Being in that office, you learn a lot. There are challenges, and there are always going to be challenges. But it’s been great.”