Hughes sees lawsuits as limiting NIAA’s power to enforce rules

Adam Candee

Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2003 | 9:24 a.m.

The door to second-guessing decisions made by Nevada's governing body for high school athletics is not cracked open, Dr. Jerry Hughes feels.

It's completely blown off the hinges in the days after a Las Vegas judge overturned penalties set forth by Hughes, the director of the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association.

"If we keep being taken to court every time something comes up, we can't win," Hughes said Tuesday, sounding exasperated and worn out from more than a week of pressurized decisions.

Deborah Johnson, the mother of Cheyenne senior football player David Peeples, challenged the NIAA's one-game team suspension for fighting and forced playoff forfeit of the Desert Shields' Sunset Region semifinal against Centennial by filing an emergency motion in District Court.

She won a temporary restraining order allowing the game to go on, potentially establishing a remarkable precedent in prep athletics if the NIAA is not successful in winning an appeal of the decision by District Judge Jackie Glass.

Is the NIAA, supposedly final judge and jury of all prep athletics in Nevada, in danger of a lawsuit undercutting its credibility and authority?

"I don't know the answer," Hughes said. "That's where society in general is heading. Anytime you don't like anything, you can run to court and that's legal to do that. We feel we have to have rules we can enforce."

Hoping to avoid similar future situations, the NIAA heads back to District and possibly state Supreme Court this week, attempting to protect its present and its future. The enforceability of the NIAA's 149-page handbook, which appears to give Hughes sweeping power on disciplinary decisions, remains to be seen.

"We sent them a message in court Friday," said Ross Goodman, attorney for Johnson and Peeples. "And we sent them a message on the field Monday (in Cheyenne's win against Centennial)."

The message to Hughes is clear if he does not end up on the winning side this week: Rewrite the rules to ensure and clarify his powers.

"We'll probably have to sit down and write more lenient rules," Hughes said. "Not stricter, more lenient -- rules that we can defend."

Essentially a bystander, Centennial coach Joel Bertsch felt the brunt of the legal proceedings beginning Thursday. Centennial's emotions spiked up thinking they had advanced upon Cheyenne's suspension, only to abruptly slide back down after learning the game was back on for Monday night after the court ruling.

"We had nothing to do with the little rumble at Cheyenne, yet we were so affected," Bertsch said. "We were kind of bounced around a little bit in the schedule like a yo-yo."

While reiterating that four turnovers had more to do with his team's demise than anything else did, Bertsch expressed disappointment that Centennial ended up on the same roller coaster with Cheyenne as the legal proceedings twisted the NIAA's original ruling.

"If it's not changed, we're in trouble as a school district, as an institution, and as teachers and students," Bertsch said. "It's what education is all about."

The Bulldogs also lost two players to major knee injuries in a game that, by the end of the week, they may have lost to a team that essentially did not exist. Rumors of lawsuits are now flying around the halls of Centennial.

"There's always something that comes up," Hughes said. "A hole you find here, a hole you find there."

Now in his 15th year as NIAA director, Hughes finds himself in his first protracted legal battle over a suspension. His first forfeiture decision came after a bloody baseball fight in 1993. He has repeated it on rare occasions, including a double suspension of Reno and Durango that gave Silverado the state baseball title in 2000.

Yet the previous choices were not challenged.

"It's a depressing thing to go through," Hughes said, echoing the adjective used by Bertsch.

The phone rang Tuesday with what Hughes hoped would be good news. Instead, he got a bittersweet message.

"Someone called today and said this is the most attention given to high school football games in a long time," Hughes said.

"I said, 'Well, isn't that sad?'"