Legislative Council roundup: Third class of girls golf, girls swim, girls tennis added

CHSAA’s Legislative Council met on Thursday. (Ryan Casey/CHSAANow.com)

AURORA — Girls golf, girls swimming and diving, and girls tennis will each add a third classification in 2016.

The move was made at Thursday’s Legislative Council meeting following a vote on a proposal from CHSAA’s Board of Directors. It needed two-thirds approval as it amended the Classification and League Organizing Committee’s report which was passed in January — and got more than enough with 93 percent of the body approving.

New enrollment splits will be determined by CLOC for 2016-18, but the breakdown of schools per class will be somewhere in this range:

Now the real work starts. The committee for each sport will have to lay out postseason formats and qualifying procedures.

“This is an exciting move for the Association because it offers so many more participation opportunities for girls sports,” said CHSAA assistant commissioner Bethany Brookens, who oversees both swimming and tennis. “The sport committees will be hard at work to determine the best playoff formats.”

The change was made possible by the new philosophy coming out of CLOC which now seeks evenly divide teams into classifications.

And, when a December survey of athletic directors showed wide support for adding a third class in each sport, it was evident that this would more than likely happen.

The last sport to add a classification was girls soccer. Class 2A started this season.

4A basketball bracket will remain at 32 teams

A proposal from the Tri-Valley League to return to a 48-team bracket in 4A basketball was shot down by the Legislative Council.

The vote required majority approval to pass, but 64 percent of the body was against it.

When discussing the proposal, those speaking out against it mentioned the fact that the change would happen in the middle of the cycle — but also that 4A has bounced back and forth between 32- and 48-team fields in recent years.

In fact, it was just last April that the tournament went to a 32-team field from 48.

“The basketball committee has wrested with the number of qualifiers (in 4A) for a number of years. We go back-and-forth, back-and-forth,” said Paul Cain, who chairs the basketball committee. “We’ve discussed this as a committee, and I hate to say it, but it’s one of our problem children. We need to figure this out.”

Mike Hughes, the athletic director at Vista PEAK who also represents the Colorado Athletic Directors Association: “We don’t think the quality of competition will increase significantly enough to warrant an additional 16 teams.”

Additionally, a proposal which would have changed specific qualifying procedures for Ponderosa to the 4A tournament also failed.

Wrestling will use a new weight-management program

Beginning with the 2015-16 season, wrestling will use a new weight management plan for athletes who are trying to drop weight.

According to the wrestling report, the Optimal Performance Calculator “permits wrestlers to descend at a rate no higher than 1.5 percent of their body weight per week.”

Each wrestler will have their weight assessed before they compete.

Wrestling also instituted a dress code for coaches during the postseason.

Notables

• The proposal to add an eighth classification — 6A — to football failed by a wide margin. Here’s a full story on that development. It’s worth noting that the Legislative Council was so against the 6A football proposal that the vote to open the CLOC report to be able to amend it nearly failed. That would’ve meant the body wouldn’t have been able to vote on the addition of 3A in girls tennis, golf and swimming.
• Hockey’s addition of JV, as well as the changes it made to the overtime rules, passed. The sport’s changes to period, game and roster limits were also approved. Teams will now only be able to carry 20 players on their varsity roster.
• Baseball tried to move the start to its season, as well as its championships, back one week. Both proposals failed individually, though the push-back of the title games was 54-46. That may be back at a future meeting.
• The proposals to expand the baseball and softball seasons, as well as the number of innings a player is allowed to play in, were both tabled by the Centennial League. Those will be back to the January 2016 Legislative Council meeting. They were tabled so that the changes, if approved, could take place at the start of a two-year cycle.
• New members of the Board of Directors who were approved on Thursday: Doug Pfau (Weldon Valley AD), Troy Baker (Buena Vista AD), and Wendy Rubin (Chatfield principal). Additionally, the Board on Wednesday appointed the following at-large Board members: Kathleen Leiding (Lyons AD), and Kelley Eichman (Fountain-Fort Carson AD).
• As we reported in January, Eddie Hartnett, the district athletic director at Adams 12, will become the next Board president.
• The meeting marked the final Legislative Council for outgoing Board president Curt Wilson. “Some of the buzz in Colorado right now is somewhat negative,” he told the membership on Thursday. “Despite the tendency to frown, let us not pass by the 99 good things because we’re in such a rush to fix the bad things.”