All Al Rhodes would like to see happen is to just let the people speak.

The Warsaw High School boys' basketball coach and president of the Indiana High School Basketball Coaches Association has long been an opponent of the class basketball tournament and he feels the people of Indiana have the chance to do what the IHSAA and principals of the state schools could not do - derail class basketball.

A bill authored by state Rep. Lawrence Buell would suspend the class basketball tournament for two years and then allow a public referendum to get the opinions of the majority of the state populace.

The bill is in the rules committee and the vote will be taken Feb. 6 to try to get the bill into the full house.

"People who wrote the bill felt like the people of Indiana were bypassed in the decision-making process," Rhodes said. "They would like the IHSAA to hold up changing the tournament until there is a public referendum.

"It would have been nicer if it would have been on this fall's voting, but the IHSAA successfully lobbied against that happening," he said. "They purposely did not want that to happen."

People would say that the legislature should not get involved in a sports issue, but Rhodes feels since the schools are public schools and are funded by tax money then tax payers have a right to be heard.

"This is a school issue," Rhodes said. "I believe the legislature does have control of the public schools in Indiana. They are the people who should have direct control. If the principals made a mistake when it comes to math, science, English or religion in schools, then the legislature would step in and fix it. I believe they would have the power to. It is better to look at it as a legislature to school issue than legislature to the IHSAA issue."

Rhodes thinks the public needs to get involved because the vote was taken by the principals seems to have been taken in ignorance with the principals knowing all the issues or even against the actual thoughts of the school's basketball coaches.

Over 60 percent of the basketball coaches in the state and 60 percent of the basketball players actually voted against scrapping the old one-class tournament. But still the vote was made to go to multi-classes.

Because of its rich tradition, Rhodes feels basketball in the state should be separate from the rest of the sports that are going class.

The bill is just another step in the long fight to keep class basketball from happening. Rhodes has fought this fight the entire way, enduring criticism and even death threats. It is a fight he has decided to keep fighting.

"It certainly is an issue that I have a lot of fight still left for," Rhodes said. "If you look at the majority of people in the state of Indiana, they would like to see it stay the same. I feel like I am fighting for them. I hope people can look back and say 'here is someone who had his beliefs and was willing to stand up for them."

It is certainly not an issue like abortion or capital punishment, but has evoked plenty of emotions on both sides of the issue, almost dividing parts of the state.

"This bill has brought back a lot of tough emotions and hard feelings," Rhodes said. "But I really appreciate there is an attempt being made to at least let the people of Indiana speak before we tear the tournament apart."

The new tournament has recently been released with less games involved in reaching the state tourney.

"I don't think people have sat down and analyzed the tournament," Rhodes said. "There are bigger schools who play in a tough sectional, and some of them look at it like nothing has changed with the new tournament. But the standards have been watered down because there are fewer games in the tournament. If you win the sectional, you only have four games to the state championship. Before, you would have six games left." [[In-content Ad]]