Student with learning disability fights to play football

SOUTH FULTON COUNTY, Ga. — Just weeks before the start of football season, one south Fulton County high school student with a learning disability is fighting for the chance to play.

“I want to be able to play. I want to play football my senior year,” Landmark Christian rising senior Jackson Ayers said.

Ayers has been on the team for the private school in south Fulton County his entire high school career, but because Ayers has a learning disability and had issues academically early on, his mother moved him back from the ninth grade to eighth grade.

Patti Ayers said the moving him back cost her son a year of athletic eligibility. They appealed the 8 semester rule, as it is called, with the Georgia High School Association. They were denied.

“I walked out of there thinking, ‘If Jackson is denied a waiver, who gets one? And I still don't know the answer to that,” Patti Ayers said.

“He’s not a starter on our football team and he hasn't been his entire career so it's not about winning or losing football games, it's about a young man who loves his team,” Jackson Ayers’ coach said.

“Please just let me play, just let me play. That's all I want to do my senior year. Let me play,” Jackson Ayers said.

The executive director of the Georgia High School Association told Channel 2 Action News the decision from the board was unanimous and is final.

He says there is no protocol for a decision to be reversed.

WSBTV