The Tuscaloosa County School System announced this week that it will reverse course on an earlier decision to cut all sports Holt High School.
According to Tuscaloosanews.com, the reversal comes almost a week after TCSS sent out a statement to parents, signed by TCSS Superintendent Keri Johnson and Holt principal Daniel Dickens, informing them that the sports school programs will be shut down following the 2025-26 school year.
"We should not have made it sound like it was set in stone. It was not set in stone," Johnson told attendees to a heated community meeting Monday night at the school gymnasium. "We are not going to be getting rid of Holt athletics."
Representatives of the school touted recent athletic upgrades that include new softball and baseball facilities along with a updated football locker room and weight room.
"We don't want athletics to go away at Holt, but we have to be able to sustain them," Johnson said. "We got to have that parental participation, the community participation and then I believe that we will see an increase in student participation when they know people are going to be there cheering them on."
In the email sent to parents of Holt and Davis-Emerson parents last Wednesday, TCSS officials said athletics would be ending following the next school year and that Holt students would have the option to play varsity sports at either Tuscaloosa County High School or Brookwood High School depending on where they live. Students would be able to choose to either attend Holt and play varsity sports at one of those two schools or could choose to become a student at the school in which they play sports.
"The decision to no longer have varsity sports at Holt High after 2025-2026 is based on steadily declining participation rates and the financial unsustainability caused by this," the statement read. "We want to give our student athletes the best opportunity for success."
Holt currently has 12 varsity sports teams, with athletics at the school dating back to the early 1920s.
