‘Going full steam ahead’: Legion Collegiate Academy AD talks about the school’s future
To say Legion Collegiate Academy has faced challenges would be an understatement.
The tuition-free public charter high school opened in August 2019 and moved into a new building two years ago. The school marketed itself as an athletic magnet school and has delivered on its promise, sending athletes to Division I schools such as Winthrop and Drexel.
However, Legion Collegiate also has been largely criticized for recruiting some of the region’s top talent from nearby high schools, and the ramifications have been severe. Despite being in Rock Hill, the school’s relationship with other high schools around York County has been tense.
“The relationship, to be honest, in York County is not good,” said Athletic Diretor Rich Posipanko during a recent interview. “That’s why none of them will play us. We can’t play any York County schools. Not from our end, it’s from their end.
“We don’t have a problem scheduling teams in Columbia and Greenville. Some of our teams do play Lewisville and (Andrew Jackson in Lancaster County), but for the most part, York County is off limits right now. And we’re hoping that’s going to change.”
Legion Collegiate had competed in the North Carolina Independent Schools Athletic Association.
But that has changed too.
Legion will get first taste of NCISAA football in 2021. And the Rock Hill team is ready
Just before the end of its two-year probationary period, Legion Collegiate and the NCISAA agreed for the school to no longer be a part of that league because Legion Collegiate is a free public charter school. Every other member of the NCISAA is tuition-based.
Posipanko, a Hall of Fame Winthrop head soccer coach, was brought in as athletic director last August. He took over for Strait Herron, the former football coach and athletic director who left after the football program was paused this spring. Herron also had been a state championship-winning coach at South Pointe High School in Rock Hill.
Legion Collegiate Academy details why it’s pausing the school’s football program
Posipanko remains optimistic about Legion Collegiate’s future. He’s also aware there will be new challenges.
Herald sports reporter Michael Burgess II recently did an interview with Posipanko. Here are his answers to some key questions:
What’s the status of athletics at Legion Collegiate Academy?
Posipanko: We’re only in our fourth year. And I think we’ve made great strides in those four years especially when two-and-a-half of it was around COVID. We have roughly 14 sports here between girls and guys. We paused football for the time being, and we have a committee that’s doing a study to decide if and when it comes back, what’s it going to look like.
As you said, you paused football. People will wonder how are things going to progress. What is your answer to them?
Posipanko: We’re going full steam ahead. We keep getting better students. We keep getting better athletes. And that’s our goal. We want to try to get students, athletes and people who we can get here. There’s no problem with any of our programs. They’re solid right now. And it’s like anything else, we evaluate after every season. We evaluate each sport, each program to see where they’re at. Are they meeting the needs of our students? Are they meeting the needs of what we’re trying to do? So it’s an ongoing type of thing.
Football is a huge money-maker for many schools and at times helps fund other athletics activities. With the loss of football at Legion Collegiate, are you worried about financing the other programs?
Posipanko: Oh no, financially, we’re in great shape. That’s not an issue. Just to let you know, while we’re doing this study, until there’s a decision made for what we do with football, we’ve kept that money budgeted for football. Both operational budgets and stipend budgets for coaches. So that money is set aside and won’t be used.
Legion Collegiate has branded itself as an athletic magnet school where students can hone their athletic skills while they get an education. Talk about how you feel the success of the school has been and where it should continue to grow.
Posipanko: We’re nowhere near where we want to be. I think people would like to think that we’re 10 years old. We’re only four, and we’ve only been in this building for two years. And our athletic facilities aren’t built yet. So we have a ways to go yet, but what we’re trying to do as a department, we have dual enrollment, where somebody can get 60 college credits free. And that’s through York Tech.
We also have split session, which means our students either go to school in the morning or in the afternoon, which provides the opportunity for them to practice earlier and basically be done with everything by three or four o’clock. What we’re trying to do with the split session, dual enrollment and our athletic programs is we’re trying to enhance what all the club sports or club teams are doing because everybody knows that’s the top level.
Club soccer, club volleyball, AAU basketball, junior golf, junior tennis. Those kinds of things are where kids are getting recruited, so we’re trying to complement and enhance what those programs are doing. And we do that through split session where there’s a huge amount of free time available and hopefully our student athletes are using that wisely. Because if you’re not taking advantage of it, there’s no sense in being here.
If you’re done at 10:40 (in the morning) every day, that gives you a lot of time to eat right, rest, get into the weight room if you want, get your individual trainer if you want, whatever you want to do. There’s a tremendous amount of time because most of these people don’t go to their club practices until five or six o’clock, so there’s a lot of free time between 11 (a.m.) and 5 (p.m.), and hopefully, if you’re going to come here as a student-athlete, you’re going to take advantage of those opportunities.”
Not having a home football field clearly impacted football. As far as the other sports, what kind of effect does not having your own facilities have? And where do the teams play?
Posipanko: To be honest, it’s hard. It’s getting harder because Rock Hill has tremendous facilities through its (Parks, Recreation and Tourism Department) in the city. And we have a good relationship where we use those facilities, as well as Winthrop. But the problem is they’re getting booked more and more and more, and the times we need them, sometimes it’s hard to get. But right now, we have first-class facilities to play at between Winthrop and the city of Rock Hill. And of course it doesn’t have our indoor sports like basketball or volleyball because we have the gym here.
When do you foresee construction on Legion’s athletic facilities getting started?
Posipanko: I don’t know. We brought some agreements to our board, and that’s what’s going on right now. Our goal is to be able to play on them August 1 (of this year), so if you use that as the date, it would have to start pretty soon.
Where do you want to see athletics program in the next three to five years?
Posipanko: I came here with just two things in mind. I wasn’t looking for this job. I’d retired twice already. But I thought I could help, and I wanted to make sure that we can get this athletic department and the coaches all on the same page. So next year, we’re all going forward with the same philosophy, same set of goals and that kind of thing. That was the one part, and we’ve made a lot of strides in that area. The other part of it was to try to get these facilities going. We were never closer than we are right now. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’ve brought some partnerships to the table in order for us to get the facilities we need. So we’ll see what happens with that, but those were the two goals.
