House Bill No. 4293 was brought to the House of Representatives on February 20, 2001 by Representatives Kolb, Hansen, Woodward, Dennis, Gieleghem, Zelenko, Murphy, Lipsey, Waters, Bogardus, Jacobs and Anderson. What House Bill No. 4293 basically says is that if a high school has both a boys' and a girls' athletic team in the same sport the seasons should be held at the same time. Part of the argument for this bill was on the basis that the female student-athletes from the state of Michigan who did go on to play at the collegiate level were at a disadvantage because of the different seasons they would play in. (House Bill No. 4293)
             A widely known change that would incur because of this bill would be moving girl's basketball to the winter where it would coincide with boy's basketball, which would force girls volleyball to be moved to the fall. This change may not affect some schools too greatly but would put schools such as Newberry High School behind the eight ball so to speak. It would put the people of Newberry and its school district in a rather tough position where they would be forced to make some changes if they wanted their athletic programs to be competitive with other schools. These changes would be a necessity because of the overload of teams seeking time in the gymnasium. In the case of Newberry High School (it will be referred to as Newberry High School, in all actuality it also includes the Newberry Middle School athletic programs as well) having only one gymnasium to accommodate all of their athletic teams, the school would be forced to build another gymnasium or make other changes to a!
             llow every team practice time in the gymnasium. For instance, if the girl's basketball program was moved to the winter sports season, that would mean gymnasium time for four girls basketball teams to go along with the five boy's basketball teams; that's nine basketball teams that all need time...