Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Texas Refuses To Reschedule State Basketball Tourney Times For Jewish Team

JTA reports that the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools ruled yesterday that it will not reschedule the state basketball semi-finals to accommodate Sabbath observance by the team of the Robert M. Beren Academy of Houston, a Jewish day school. Currently Beren is scheduled to play Dallas Covenant on Friday night in one of the two semifinal games, with the finals scheduled for 2 p.m. the next day. Beren's head of school, Rabbi Harry Sinoff, said: "Just as TAPPS doesn’t schedule games on Sunday in deference to Christian teams, we expected that as a Jewish team, there would be grounds for a scheduling change."

UPDATE: CNN reported March 1 that TAPPS, threatened with the filing of a lawsuit to obtain a TRO if they did not, has rescheduled the Friday playoffs for Friday afternoon. Also it will rescheduled the finals to 8 p.m. Saturday if the Beren Academy team ends up in them.