Legion Collegiate to break away from SC athletics, join NC private school league

Legion Collegiate Academy sports teams will soon play most of their future contests just north of the Carolinas border.

Rock Hill’s newest public charter school, one that battled community alienation and joined in on a lawsuit against the South Carolina High School League in its first two years of existence, announced Wednesday that it will voluntarily exit the SCHSL in July.

The school will join the North Carolina Independent Schools Athletic Association (NCISAA) as a provisional member starting in 2021-22. Legion’s status in the NCISSA is provisional for two years, meaning that the Lancers will not be able to compete for a state championship in that span.

The NCISAA governs athletics among that state’s private schools. After two years of provisional status, LCA will be re-evaluated for full membership, a release from the school states.

“We could not be happier for what this will mean for the student-athletes in our school,” Legion athletic director Strait Herron said in a statement. “Regardless of what parents have heard previously, starting this July, any student that lives in South Carolina may attend LCA and participate in athletics without the previous limitations based on where the family lived, or what school the student may be transferring from. This is a huge win for our students.”

Two of Legion’s sister schools — Gray Collegiate in West Columbia, S.C., and Oceanside Collegiate in Mount Pleasant — said they will remain in the SCHSL.

A news conference to further detail the move is planned for Monday.

Why Legion Collegiate might be moving on

Legion has drawn the ire of traditional public schools since its inception.

Ahead of its inaugural 2019-20 year, many of its athletes — perhaps enticed by the school’s shorter in-classroom hours and emphasis on athletics training — transferred from high schools in York, Chester and Lancaster counties. As a result, the school drew criticism from those who perceived that the school recruited.

The school also hired a stacked roster of coaches to lead their respective teams before the 2019-20 year. Among those coaches include a multi-time, state-championship-winning trio of Rock Hill greats Herron, Jimmy “Moose” Wallace and Bobby Carroll.

The community ire that built up resulted in real consequences: In its first year, the school had a difficult time renting facilities to train in. All four York County school districts — York, Clover, Rock Hill and Fort Mill — denied Legion’s requests to use their sports facilities in 2019-20, Herron told The Herald last year. (This was significant because Legion, which only in February moved to its permanent campus, did not immediately have facilities like weight rooms and courts and fields to use to train.)

It also proved challenging to find local teams willing to play Legion in various sports. In football, for instance, the only local traditional public school the Lancers played against was Catawba Ridge in 2019.

A lawsuit against the SCHSL in 2020 seemed to align with the informal obstacles Legion faced, too: Said lawsuit stated that two amendments passed by the league in March 2020 “intentionally and illegally” discriminated against S.C. private and public charter schools.

Under one of those amendments, most students who transfer from a traditional school to a charter or private school would have to sit out a year before they would be eligible to play for their respective athletic teams. (In June, a Richland County judge ruled in favor of the private and charter schools, granting them an injunction that effectively pushed back the two amendments and prevented them from going into effect for the 2020-21 year.)

In May 2020, Legion principal TK Kennedy told The Herald that the lawsuit was a form of “gamesmanship” played by the executive members of the high school league.

He said at the time that it was the latest tactic in a series of them to make public charter schools like Legion feel unwelcome, referencing the fact that Legion’s initial attempt to join the league was tabled, then later denied, by the SCHSL Executive Committee before it was approved on appeal by the SCHSL’s appellate committee.

“We knew we had that right to join the high school league, but again, my goal was to show the local community here that we were in there and we were going to play fair, by the rules,” Kennedy told The Herald in May 2020.

Legion is still competing through the 2020-21 season in the SCHSL’s Region 4-2A, home to the other Rock Hill public charter, York Prep Academy.

Herron told The Herald Wednesday that this move was a “step in the right direction” for what Legion is trying to accomplish.

What about Gray Collegiate in West Columbia?

Legion’s move to a North Carolina high school league isn’t unprecedented. The Rock Hill school will be following in the footsteps of Westminster Catawba Christian School, a growing region basketball power that resides in Rock Hill but participates in the NCISAA.

Brian Newsome, Gray Collegiate principal, said this in a statement: “While I understand the news of Legion Collegiate Academy leaving the SCHSL may be a shock to others, as a sister school we have been made aware this decision has been in the works for a while. We respect Legion as a sister school, both managed by Pinnacle Charter Academies. However, the decision of each school to stay or move continues to remain with the principal at each school. As the principal at Gray, we will not be leaving the SCHSL. We appreciate the partnership we have built with member schools around South Carolina and the collegial competition we have developed within the league. We fully support Legion and wish them the best, however Gray Collegiate Academy will remain in the SCHSL for years to come.”

Lou Bezjak of The State contributed reporting.