Leading off today: There's nothing to show for it yet, but we're technically three weeks into the new high school sports year according to the standard calendar used by many governing bodies across the country.
It's a planning tool that helps keep start dates for practices, the season, and the playoffs anchored to positions on the "normal" calendar. Week 4 begins Sunday, which means it's time for the NYSPHSAA's annual Central Committee meeting, which takes place Tuesday and Wednesday in Schenectady.
The Central Committee meeting is the largest of the NYSPHSAA's four annual meetings and includes four representatives -- the male and female delegates who serve on the Executive Committee as well as a principals rep and a chief school officers rep -- from each section. Operationally, it's not substantially different from other NYSPHSAA meetings, but it does often serve as a starting point for discussions on topics that later become policy.
Should there be unfinished business when the meeting adjourns, the next opportunity to move forward comes when the smaller Executive Committee conducts a quarterly meeting on Oct. 21 in Albany.
Here's the rundown on the major topics on next week's agenda:
The Three-Region Rotation
The NYSPHSAA has been working on a new approach for state tournaments in team sports for more than a year with an eye toward addressing inconsistencies that rear their head when trying to squeeze nine, 10, or 11 teams into a eight-school quarterfinal bracket.
Though some of the nuts and bolts hadn't been worked out yet at its February meeting, the NYSPHSAA Executive Committee liked what it saw enough to instruct Executive Director Robert Zayas to return in May with a version members could vote on. That would clear the way for using the new schematic beginning this fall.
However, everything went sideways at the spring meeting as multiple questions arose, including some on what had previously appeared to be settled policy.
The Central Committee meeting will be a fresh opportunity to address remaining concerns and potentially get adoption for the 2026-27 school year on track.
Private and charter schools in state tournaments
We're approaching the homestretch for a resolution of the periodic controversy over private and charter schools competing in NYSPHSAA tournaments. The proposed solution now in play will get an airing, and it doesn't aim to exile member schools in good standing.
Instead, the Schools Without Boundaries ad hoc committee and the state office have been working on developing performance-based guidelines for moving schools between classifications at the sectional level, with oversight from a state committee when needed.
In short, a private or charter school would become a candidate for reclassification upward if it meets one of four criteria:
• A winning percentage of .750 in its league, overall or vs. opponents in the same class (minimum of four games played).
• The team is recognized as a league and/or playoff champion.
• The team is a sectional semifinalist.
• The team wins a state championship.
(A minor quibble: Are the latter two criteria redundant? Can a team win a state championship without first winning a sectional semifinal in the "stick-and-ball" sports?)
(Another minor quibble: How does that sectional semifinalist clause work in cross country, for instance? Sectionals are a one-shot meet as opposed to head-to-head, single elimination.)
There is likely to be questions. For instance, Class D in some sections is so small that sub-.500 teams can slide into the semifinals with one win. It's doubtful there would be sentiment to more them up, but should that be an automatic trigger for considering the possibility?
There are also criteria for keeping a team in its most recent classification or moving it down based on season results.
While the sectional committee examining cases will also consider information about transfer students, there doesn't seem to be anything in the early draft to take significant graduation losses into account.
The appeals process would allow any section to request the NYSPHSAA Classification Oversight Committee to conduct a review of relevant information and make the final call of where to assign the school.
The school in question can also appeal, but only after exhausting all options at the sectional level.
Cheerleading request potentially raises a larger issue
It wouldn't be a NYSPHSAA meeting if there wasn't at least one item related to cheerleading on the agenda. What's at the heart of one proposal could have implications for other sports.
With two sets of actions in the past year, the Executive Committee prohibited choreography -- the sport's most crucial element -- for both Competitive (fall) and Game Day Cheerleading (winter) before the official start dates of the respective seasons.
In the eyes of the Competitive Cheerleading group, the restriction goes beyond the offseason limitations placed on other sports. There are some apples-and-oranges issues here, but the comparison to be made -- this is my example, not theirs -- might be a lacrosse team installing a new 10-man ride in January or a football team converting to the single-wing offense in July rather than focusing on individual skills in the offseason.
From that perspective, cheerleading asking to reverse the new policies might not be unreasonable, and the matter will be voted on next week.
More action items
Relatively speaking, next week's agenda is light on proposals that will be up for a vote, and most of what's there should sail through. Among them:
• As it does periodically, the wrestling committee is seeking to tweak its weight classes, with slight modifications to what th NFHS most recently approved. Updating to 103, 110, 118, 126, 132, 138, 144, 150, 157, 165, 175, 190, 215, and 285 pounds preserves the lower weight classes and offers an extra middleweight slot.
• The boys ice hockey committee has several proposals, including one to let sections adopt running clocks once there is an eight-goal differential in the third period. Aside from helping to keep double-, triple-, and quadrupleheaders on schedule, the measure reduces the possibility of play getting chippy late in a blowout.
Justin Ritzel of the Canandaigua Daily Messenger reported that about 6% of games involving Section 5 teams could have been subject to the rule last season. I looked at Section 3 and came up with a similar number (6.7%).
• Now that the team tournament is firmly rooted as part of the sport, the boys and girls tennis committees have proposed changes to address potential "stacking." For the uninitiated, that's where coaches sacrifice a match by moving a lesser player up in the order to create more favorable matchups for the other competitors.
File this away for future reference
Each NYSPHSAA quarterly meeting offers sections the opportunity to air concerns raised locally. There are a few that have been submitted ahead of time, and one in particular bears watching.
With the same point raised in passing at the May meeting, Section 8 has formalized concern over the large number of athletes who qualify for the state track and field and swimming championships. Example: Including swimmers from the other Federation associations, there were an unwieldy 47 qualifiers for the boys 500-yard freestyle (the day's longest race) in March.
The combination of costs and maintaining the prestige associated with state championships all but assures the topic will have legs in the coming school year.
The Championship Philosophy Committee discussed it at its June meeting, and reconsidering the long-standing goal of advancing 5-8% of athletes in individual sports to state meets is a likely starting point. Being able to make qualifying marks during the regular season might also go the way of buggy-whip factories.
Already, the indoor track committee is asking to tighten qualifying standards for relays (which are now split into two classes), and a second proposal to be voted on would cut schools' relay rosters from four reserves to just two.
As an aside, the boys and girls swimming committees would like to add team championships to their state meets. That figures to get back-burnered unless/until the Executive Committee trims the overall head count for the individual championships.
