Leading off today: It's the first NYSPHSAA Executive Committee meeting of the new school year, and the 22 members from around the state will have a lot more on their plate Wednesday than talking about what they did over summer vacation.
When the larger Central Committee met in July in Buffalo, the members sent numerous proposals back to the 11 sections for consideration. Now, it's time to cast votes in Saratoga Springs.
Some will fall under the heading of routine housekeeping, while others will make headway toward resolving big-ticket questions such as right-sizing certain state championships.
A much-studied issue is winding down
I don't believe I was alone in believing that the NYSPHSAA would have reined in the size of state swimming and track and field meets by now. The issue has been on the table for a while, though it did get somewhat back-burnered for a time during the flare-up of the private vs. public schools debate.
In fairness, this was never going to get done in one big package of fixes because multiple factors contributed to the issue. However, the pieces are now coming together.
One proposal to be voted on amends the desired goal of advancing 5-8% of athletes to state championships by removing the floor, which potentially affects a few sports like skiing. At the other end of the spectrum, the 8% cap would be treated more rigidly but could still be exceeded with Executive Committee approval after the Championship Advisory Committee chimes in.
More to the point, however, the Executive Committee will also vote on creating a standard criteria for making it to state championships in sports in which athletes qualify by time -- notably track and swimming.
If approved, athletes could only qualify by winning at their state qualifier or by placing in the top five there after hitting a standard during the season. That would all but end sections sending eight or 10 swimmers in an event or seeing a quarter of the pole vault field eliminated by no-heighting or only making the opening height.
(Though diving in the swim meets and field events in track don't rely on timing, the same principle for qualifying will apply.)
Meanwhile, the NYSPHSAA will consider adding championships
With girls wrestling continuing steady growth, the sport committee has proposed starting a dual-meet state championship similar to what the boys began in 2018.
With eight sections fielding a minimum of six teams and a total of 168 squads statewide, the sport qualifies for a team championship.
The Executive Committee is also going to vote on the proposal for boys and girls swimming team championships that has been stuck in neutral for a couple of years ago amidst logistical and other questions.
The move requires a procedural change to designate swimming as a team/individual sport rather than individual. But it also requires buy-in on the format, which the swim committees developed in order to avoid the substantial expense of separate team and individual meets.
The 11 sections would each send one school team consisting of eight athletes and an alternate to compete, with the largely logical assumption that most would have already qualified in individual events or relays anyway.
Official scoring for the teams would be compiled based upon performances from the individual meet races.
The swimming committees point to New York as being the only state without a team championship. However, the Championship Advisory Committee doesn't support the overall proposal, and the Championship Philosophy Committee doesn't support the team/individual designation.
As such, the prospect for passage doesn't look promising.
Tidying up the handbook
• The NYSPHSAA shouldn't need to tweak its penalties for exceeding the maximum number of contests for a while if the latest fix is approved.
The Executive Committee will vote on revising the penalties section of the handbook to clarify the remedy for team and individual violations. The current rule potentially penalizes an entire team when an individual student-athlete exceeds the maximum number of contests, even though the team itself has not exceeded the maximum.
Cleaning up the language one more time clarifies that the school can accept an ineligibility ruling or elect to suspend the head coach from all team-related functions and activities for the remainder of the season.
• In retrospect, it should have been a common-sense decision back in 2018, but the boys wrestling committee is seeking to allow participation in sectional or NYSPHSAA dual meet championships to count toward the representation rule (i.e., minimum number of contests) with respect to the state individual championships.
It makes sense since dual meet championships take place during the regular season, a quirk unique to wrestling.
In theory, approval will make participaing in the dual meet tournaments more attractive to a few schools.
• Meanwhile, consideration of a softball proposal might at some point bring about a change to the handbook as an unintended (though not necessarily bad) consequence.
Though the handbook contains many New York State Education Department regulations that apply to all sports, the NYSPHSAA generally will make sport-specific exceptions to its own rules when appropriate. The lengthy discussion a few years ago that led to girls basketball continuing to use NCAA rules (better preparing athletes for college) rather than National Federation standards is an example.
On Wednesday, the softball committee will seek approval to require that suspended games in its state tournament be completed to the full seven innings (or 6 1/2 if the home team is ahead). It would apply to all levels of the tournament except sub-regionals.
The discussions of pros and cons have included concerns about back-to-back lengthy travel days or even hotel accommodations to finish an inning or two when a team has a decisive lead, etc.
The discussions thus far have also included questions how other sports treat suspended contests. Regardless of how Wednesday's vote goes, the door is going to be open -- if someone chooses to walk through it, proverbially speaking -- to develop uniformity for all sports.
• When the handbook committee met Sept. 30, the subject of potentially allowing disciplinary measures in response to credible evidence of unsportsmanlike conduct or flagrant actions missed or not addressed by game officials arose.
The handbook currently doesn't provide the authority for a section or the NYSPHSAA to do so, and there are no immediate changes forthcoming since the idea is still only in the discussion stage.
Before you label allowing the change as a no-brainer, consider this: There's an expectation that responsible school administrators will deal with such misbehavior by their own athletes in appropriate fashion. One question that arises is whether this potential change causes them to kick the responsibility upstream, distancing them from parental blowback that sometimes arrives attached to billable hours for lawyers.
A couple of sport-specific votes
The baseball committee has made a recommendation to allow pitchers and catchers to start practice a week earlier than the official spring sports date. It would be a small but effective way to get arms into game shape a bit sooner at the start of the season while also giving coaches a chance to evaluate roles for new prospects. The proposed initial week would not permit throwing to live hitting.
Speaking of hurlers, there is also a proposal to lower pitch-count thresholds before an additional night of rest is required. Most of the changes to early-season maximums are miniscule. However, the May/June triggers could be meaningful come sectionals and state playoffs.
For instance, a pitcher currently requires three nights of rest after throwing between 72 and 102 pitches. But the proposal calls for a fourth night of rest for 76 to 95 pitches and tacks on a fifth night for 96 to 115 pitches.
The baseball committee supported the proposal by a 10-1 vote, but it's conceivable that sections with a lost of Class C and D schools (i.e., small rosters) could push back on the changes anyway.
• I mentioned over the summer that flag football was on the path to new classification cutoffs based on BEDS data.
It's routine stuff done periodically for all sports, though these changes are pretty dramatic because of the explosive growth (60 new teams in two years) in the number of teams.
| 2026 season |
Class |
2027 season |
| 1,018 & above |
Class A |
945 & above |
| 601 - 1,017 |
Class B |
500 - 944 |
| 600 & below |
Class C |
499 & below |
With 263 teams already out there, the next revision of classification cutoffs could also see the addition of a fourth state class in time for the 2029 season. It's permissible once a sport exceeds 300 teams.
By the way, the flag football committee wants to give sections the option of playing overtimes in the regular season. That's unlikely to draw opposition.
Championship venues
We're in the midst of a busy cycle for awarding hosting contracts for future state championships, and at least five of the six up for votes covering winter and spring sports from 2028-30 should sail through by voice vote:
- LECOM Harborcenter in Buffalo, boys ice hockey
- Hudson Valley Community College in Troy,girls basketball
- Greenlight Network Grand Slam Park in Binghamton, softball
- Wild Wood Country Club in Rush (Section 5), girls golf
- SUNY Cortland, girls lacrosse
The sixth vote is for approval of boys basketball at Harding Mazzotti Arena in Glens Falls. The bid has the recommendation of the boys basketball committee and the NYSPHSAA office staff and should gain approval based on that and the financials. However, Binghamton is likely to have some support on Wednesday.
Both bids offer the NYSPHSAA generous terms, including waivers on several fees. However, Glens Falls is offering a $45,000 donation on top of that while Binghamton has offered $20,000. The fee waivers are nice, but address costs that haven't existed ("zero bids") in any of the recent basketball contracts. On the other hand, the donations go directly to the NYSPHSAA's bottom line.
• I'm not looking to cause trouble here -- I know, that's a nice departure from my modus operandi -- but a note in the meeting packet for Wednesday got me thinking.
At 9-3-2 entering action this week, the SUNY Cortland women have a realistic chance of hosting NCAA Division III first- and second-round soccer tournament games the same weekend the NYSPHSAA final fours are supposed to be conducted on campus.
As such, the NYSPHSAA is moving its games to nearby Homer, Cortland, and Dryden high schools Nov. 14-15 in an arrangement that is spelled out in the contract and has been used at least a few times before.
If we're going to relegate championships to high school fields -- the last NYSPHSAA tournament fully played at the college was in 2021 -- is it time to consider actively encourage communities with multiple comparable fields (and perhaps better hotel and meal options) to bid on future contracts?
• There were no bids submitted for hosting the girls hockey regionals of state bowling championships, so those contracts for 2028-30 have gone out for re-bids.
If bowling centers once again show no interest, the NYSPHSAA may look at the possibility of breaking the tournament into two events (girls/boys or D1/D2).
What's the issue? The number of venues capable of holding a weekend tournament with around 40 teams as well as individual entries shrinks with every passing year. The remaining ones are sometimes locked into other tournaments or don't want to disrupt house leagues, especially when it means shutting off the beer taps and putting away the shot glasses while the kids are in the building.
File this away
It's only a discussion item, meaning the objective for now is to send the proposal back to the sections for consideration, but the football committee has put forward the idea of eliminating playoffs in eight-man football.
There has been an ebb and flow to the number of teams since eight-man was reinstituted and the sport has never grown beyond regional championship status. We're back to the point where it might not be sustainable as a number of schools have either returned to 11-man football alone or in collaboration with a nearby school.
The football committee believes ending the postseason at the sectional level instead of with two or three rounds of intersectional playoffs would incentivize programs to push harder toward returning to 11-man.
Understandably, this has people talking. The Championship Advisory Committee had first crack at assessing the proposal at its most recent meeting and came away unconvinced.
Unlike girls ice hockey, another sport barely clinging to the minimum number of teams needed to permit regional championships, eight-man football is seen as a safety net for programs struggling at the moment but potentially able to rebuild sufficiently large rosters for 11-man football.
As such, look for the future of eight-man to be examined from several angles and with opposing views in the coming months and even years.
• Ice hockey officials didn't like me very much when I objected to their tactics to obtain higher per-game fees from Section 2 last year. I've finally seen a legitimate justification for an increase, as mentioned in Wednesday's meeting packet.
The NYSPHSAA's contractual agreement with officials groups sets state tournament pay at the average of what the respective sections pay during the season. The problem is that Nassau and Suffolk counties, where the cost of just about everything is higher than in the other nine sections, are not part of the hockey structure.
If you account for Sections 8 and 11 in hockey they way it's done in other sports, then the hockey officials could and should be making more money.
The Executive Committee will discuss it, but an amendment to the existing contract only sounds fair.
