In January, the Tribune first reported the Plant volleyball team had received an invitation to compete in the Nike Challenge, a 24-team national volleyball tournament in Chicago Oct. 3-4. They were the only team from Florida selected to participate.

Plant coach Leanna Taylor said it was only a matter of getting approval from the FHSAA. Since then, however, it was an uphill battle to get the approval.

This was Plant’s dilemma. As of the 2007-08 FHSAA volleyball manual, bylaw 104.03 stated a FHSAA school member may participate in a maximum field of 16 teams in out of state competition.

Taylor said several people offered to help her configure the correct paperwork, including county athletic director Lanness Robinson, Brandon wrestling coach Russ Cozart and several volleyball coaches around the state who wanted Plant to represent Florida in the tournament. On Wednesday, Taylor showed me copies of letters she sent to the Hillsborough County School District and the FHSAA to grant them the trip to Chicago. It had gotten to the point where Taylor was prepared to travel to Gainesville, the site of the FHSAA main office, to get approval.

Eventually, Plant was given the green light.

“That’s breaking ground for this state,” Taylor said. “The FHSAA wrote a whole new bylaw for us to go. They said if you only break the number of teams rule, not how many matches played, because we can only play five, that’s fine.”

As of this June, that rule has in fact been altered. See for yourselfFHSAA spokesperson Cristina Alvarez said the new rule will apply to all schools and under recently added Policy 7, “invitation tournaments exceeding 16 teams are subject to approval by the Executive Director”

Alvarez said Plant’s situation didn’t lead to the change in the bylaw, but it certainly sounds like it did.

Taylor said Plant will not play in the Tampa Bay Invitational this year, one of the premier tournaments in the state, because the team is competing in Chicago. Plant has played in every Invitational since it was created.

“This is the first year that will not happen,” she said.

And I say, good for Plant. Many of the athletes on the team compete against some of the best players in the world during club season, yet during the school year, they have to maintain an elite level of performance even if some the competition doesn’t require it.