NYSSWA blog: Assessing the proposed NYSPHSAA reductions (page 2)

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Contrast that with Jamestown's schools, which are only 95 miles away from Ashtabula, Ohio, if they were ever inclined to play a football or basketball game there. But that trip would be derailed if the travel proposal passes, because Ohio does not border New York.

Cream of the crop penalized

Admittedly, the Ohio example doesn't apply to very many schools, although Aquinas has had to play some football games there in recent years because Section 5 ADs can never seem to find their planning calendar when the Little Irish call to try to schedule games.

Football scheduling in the state is notoriously tight and will get worse if the proposal to shorten the regular season for many sports is approved; a six-or seven-week regular season (instead of seven or eight) will leave fewer teams with non-league dates available, a concern for more than just Aquinas.

Even Canandaigua had to accept games with Camden from Section 3 and Slippery Rock, Pa., last season just to fill out its schedule.

Other travel is less out of necessity than it is the result of ambition. We have lacrosse teams that have been known to travel to Maryland and Massachusetts, two other hotbed states for a sport that many New York schools play exceedingly well.

Similarly, there are only so many places for Saratoga's superb girls cross country team to run in its neck of the woods without bumping into Shenendehowa, Guilderland, Colonie, Shaker, Burnt Hills, Queensbury and Averill Park ad nauseam even before racing most of them at sectionals, states, the Federation meet and the Nike Cross Nationals qualifier in consecutive weeks.

The Streaks have ventured during the regular season to meets like the Brown Invitational in Rhode Island and the Great Amercan Cross Country Festival, which is returning to Cary, N.C., after a three-year stay in Hoover, Ala., in a bid to challenge themselves against similarly elite programs.

Those trips, as well as basketball junkets to Myrtle Beach, Florida and California taken by any number of NYSPHSAA member schools would fall by the wayside. (I assume the Fayetteville-Manlius girls could still go for a fourth straight Nike Cross Nationals championship in Portland, Ore., because the event is a "club" competition after the H.S. season concludes, not a varsity sport.)

And, speaking of Myrtle Beach, many baseball and softball teams head to South Carolina and Florida each spring to squeeze in a week of practices and some early-season games away from their (frequently) muddy home fields.

Some would make the case against such travel on two fronts: fairness and and the all-important issue of the expense.

There is some merit to the question of competitive balance, particularly in the case of the spring sports. When everything goes right, baseball and softball teams come home from the south and leap right into their local schedules, beating up on teams that have been practicing mostly on gymnasium floors.

It's actually possible for lacrosse midfielders to practice face-offs on a rug in the gym; it's an entirely different matter for teams hoping to work on their 10-man ride on 110- x 60-foot hardwood floors because the natural-grass field is unplayable. If we take away the advantage associated with being able to go train in warm weather, do we have to place restrictions on teams that practice and play on artificial turf? The answer to that, of course, is, "No."

But that should also be the answer to the question of whether the NYSPHSAA should be prohibiting member schools from hitting the road if that's what they desire. The most fundamental reason why we have an unwieldy 600-plus local school districts across the state is that local residents want local control of their schools.

The usual formula for funding big out-of-state trips is for the school to foot part of the bill with the discretionary money assigned to that particular sport, with team members holding fund-raisers and/or paying the rest of the tab out of their own pocket. Too, tournament organizers can foot some of the bill, and elite programs like Christ The King's CHSAA basketball teams have corporate sponsors.

If the teams want to travel and the local constituents are OK with it, why should the NYSPHSAA be legislating to stop them?

Crunching the numbers

I've been piecing together thoughts for today's treatise since early this month when I attended a Gates Chili school board meeting just a few days after Brian Hillabush broke the story about the Fiscal Concerns Ad Hoc Committee on TheBatavian.com. [continued]

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