Kim Osborne, 17, who attends North Oldham High School in Goshen, Ky., said her coach, Brian Jones, told her she'd have to pick between being on the squad her senior year or going to the convention in Orlando, Fla., citing a policy in which players would be dropped from the team if they missed practice.

The convention, known as the National Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod Youth Gathering, will be held at the same time as the first week of practice, July 28-Aug. 1. It occurs every three years and is open only to teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19, meaning this year would have been Osborne's only chance to go.

"I was shocked," Osborne said. "I didn't think I'd ever have to decide between the two."

Osborne, who has played volleyball since fifth grade, said she called her coach about the event in January but said she never got a response. She went on to raise around $2,100 for the event and purchased airline tickets.

Then, three weeks ago, Osborne said the coach told her she wouldn't be able to attend if she wanted to play. Her mother, Karen Osborne, said she wrote Jones and school principal Lisa Jerrod numerous letters claiming the coach's decision was discriminatory.

Neither Jones nor Jerrod returned calls by The Courier-Journal.

Karen Osborne said Jones and Jerrod refused to budge, so she contacted the Liberty Counsel, an advocacy group of lawyers at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. The Liberty Counsel then wrote a letter to the school board, which Kim's parents had not contacted.

"The school ought to take measures to accommodate a student's request to attend a religious event," Mathew Staver of the Liberty Counsel told The Courier-Journal. "(The) school ... accommodated every request to other students to attend secular programs."

Anne Coorssen, a lawyer for the Oldham County (Ky.) School Board, said the coach was violating a long-established districtwide policy against religious discrimination and she advised him to reverse his decision, which he did.

"It seems like this could've been resolved more easily if they just came to us," Coorssen said.