Those who officiate “interscholastic athletic events” would have to undergo criminal background checks under a new bill pending before the Tennessee General Assembly.
The Tennessee State Senate recently introduced a bill that would make background checks a requirement for those who officiate "interscholastic athletic events."
The proposal, SB 2118, would require “referees or officiates of interscholastic athletic events to submit to a criminal background investigation and provide a fingerprint sample.”
It’s unclear which age groups’ athletic officials would be affected.
The bill comes on the heels of a similar Nov. 12 decision by the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association Board of Control, which voted unanimously to require background checks for all officials before being allowed to register with the organization.
The issue of background checks came to light in September when the TSSAA suspended former official Kyle Gill following an incident with a Glencliff player.
Gill collided with Glencliff senior defensive back Malcom Easley and deemed the hit on him to be “malicious” when asked by a reporter.
Following Gill’s comments on the incident, the TSSAA suspended him when the organization discovered he had not fully disclosed his criminal history when being vetted for the job.
In 2007, Gill, now 36, pleaded no contest to charges of attempted statutory rape and aggravated criminal trespass, according to Rutherford County court records obtained by The Tennessean.
Gill was sentenced to probation and was ordered to “not take any job with any school system while on probation” in Rutherford County.
Records show that Gill was sentenced to two consecutive 11-month, 29-day terms of probation.
Gill initially had been charged with sexual battery and attempted rape. The records do not specify why those charges were changed.
Following the news of Gill’s past, many were calling for the TSSAA to make mandatory background checks a requirement immediately, but executive director Bernard Childress and the TSSAA waited until the November meeting to take a vote on the issue with as much information available as possible.
Sen. Jim Tracy, R-Shelbyville, sponsored the bill and said he assumed background checks were already required by the TSSAA when Gill’s past came to light. When Tracy realized they were not, he said he felt a call to action. Tracy is a former TSSAA official.
“I just assumed – I’ve been out of the TSSAA a while – I just assumed they’d been doing it,” Tracy said. “They have not. So when I heard the story and read about it I said that’s something we need to do and I told them I’d be glad to do it.”
For Tracy, the issue hit close to home.
“I’m a former TSSAA basketball official for over 25 years,” Tracy said. “I also was an NCAA basketball official and I did football with the TSSAA so I’ve got a background of officiating. The reason why I took the bill was because I thought it was necessary to do when you’ve got officials around young people.”
Childress said Tracy may have been working on the bill before the Nov.12 decision, but hopes to get a meeting with the senator to let him know what the TSSAA has already implemented.
“He may have been approached and written legislation even prior to us implementing something,” Childress said. “But we do plan on trying to get a meeting so we can sit down with him and let him know what has already been taken care of.”
The bill is set to go before the Senate Education Committee for consideration.
Reach Sam Brown at 615-259-8232 and on Twitter @SamBrownTN. Reach Joel Ebert at 615-259-8379 and on Twitter @joelebert29.