Follow CNN
A Black softball player says she was forced to cut off her hair beads at a game. Her family wants to change the rule they say is discriminatory By Leah Asmelash, CNN
Julius Pyles via WRAL
Nicole Pyles was told the beads in her hair went against the rules and she had to either take out the beads or sit the game out, she said.
(CNN) It was her last home softball game of the season, and Nicole Pyles, a sophomore at Durham Hillside High School in North Carolina, had just hit a double. Her hair, braided with beads and tied in a bun at the bottom of her neck, was the last thing on her mind.
NFHS executive director says allowing states to implement shot clock had pretty strong favor
Tags:
By Nick Stevens, HighSchoolOT managing editor
Indianapolis The position of the basketball rules committee at the National Federation of State High School Associations when it comes to shot clock in high school basketball has evolved over the years.
This week, the NFHS, which governs high school sports rules nationally, approved a recommendation to allow individual state associations to adopt a 35-second shot clock in high school basketball beginning in the 2022-2023 school year.
In past years, the NFHS has considered this proposal. It has also received proposals for mandatory implementation, which it has rejected each time, but the votes on the basketball rules committee changed this year, according to NFHS Executive Director Dr. Karissa Niehoff.
3
As a young girl in the small town of Cromwell, Connecticut, all Andraya Yearwood wanted to do was run. Born into a family that prized athleticism, she dabbled in soccer, basketball, football, and dance as a child. But one day in the sixth grade, she saw older students running around the track oval, and she was hooked. She pictured herself, like them, flying on two fast feet. In the seventh and eighth grades, Andraya competed on her school’s boys track and field team, but that increasingly felt wrong. From an early age, Andraya had been drawn to her mom’s heels, to wearing skirts and wigs with long hair. It was a therapist in middle school who gave her the words to understand who she always had been, a girl who was transgender. When she entered high school in the fall of 2016, she wanted to run on the girls’ team. She was a girl, after all. She knew that, and now she wanted the world, or at least a slightly bigger world beyond her family, her friends, and her school to acknow
Feb. 15, 2021
In September, when a referee told 14-year-old Najah Aqeel that she couldn’t compete in a junior varsity volleyball game because she was wearing a hijab, she was crushed.
“I was crying. I was sad and upset and angry,” recalled Najah, a high school freshman at Valor College Prep in Nashville.
The referee cited a rule established by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), the body that governs most high school sports across the country noting that student athletes wearing “hair devices” more than three inches wide needed to secure prior approval from their state athletic association to compete. For athletes such as Najah, the rule meant they had to secure permission to compete while wearing their hijabs, the head coverings worn in public by some Muslim girls and women.
A student athlete sparked national change after being disqualified from a volleyball match for wearing a hijab
US high school volleyball players no longer need approval to wear religious head coverings during matches, thanks to a 14-year-old Muslim player who inspired the rule change.
The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), which sets competition rules for most US high school sports, announced on Thursday the new rule and said it could extend to other sports.
Support for the rule change swelled in September after Najah Aqeel, a freshman at Valor Collegiate Prep in Nashville, Tennessee, was disqualified from a volleyball match for wearing a hijab or headscarf.