Hurricane Refugee Students Eligible for School Sports

The students moving into your community from areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina could end up helping your teams on to victory. Rick Kindhart with the Missouri State High School Activities Association says those fleeing the damage and going to school here will be allowed to play in sports and other activities. Kindhart says his organization will consider any student coming in to have a hardship transfer and will be eligible to participate. But he says if the family ends up moving around after arriving in Missouri, then other transfer applications will have to done later. Kindhart says MSHSAA will have a liberal eligibility policy to make sure the students get back some normalcy through extra-curricular activities. He says people could try to take advantage of the situation for some kind of athletic advantage for a school, but he really doesn’t expect that to happen.