CHAPEL HILL—The Board of Directors of the North Carolina High School Athletic Association completed its two-day winter board meeting on Wednesday with a number of action items.
The Board, consisting of superintendents, principals, athletic directors and coaches from across the state, representing the eight different NCHSAA regions and all four classifications of schools, did committee work all day on Tuesday and then voted on items on Wednesday at the Simon F. Terrell Building, the home offices of the NCHSAA.
Among other highlights of the Board meeting:
• approved expanding the playoff draw in volleyball, softball and baseball from 32 to 48 teams in each classification, starting in 2006-07
• approved the sports playoff calendar for 2006-2007
• since the numbers for indoor track have reached the appropriate threshold for reclassification, indoor track will go from an open, all-classifications together sport to two classifications (4-A and then 1-A/2-A/3-A together), starting with the 2007 championship
• the state outdoor track and field championships will be held once again at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro in the spring of 2006, but with a scheduling conflict the 1-A and 3-A championships will both be held on May 19 with the 2-A and 4-A championships on May 20
• reviewed an experimental change to allow golf coaches to supply advice to their players under certain conditions; the policy was revised to allow golf coaches to give advice but not on the tee or green
• the cheerleading invitational championship will continue to be offered and schools will still follow the appropriate safety guidelines, but the decision whether or not to make cheerleading a sport, subject to those restrictions, will be left to the local educational agency (LEA). Some school systems have already declared it a sport locally.
• approved using a predetermined draw in the individual state championship tennis tournaments, with regional champions against quarterfinalists from different regions
• the timeline for the next realignment was approved, compressing the actual time of the process to about a year from the gathering of the data to the final approval. The next realignment period will run from 2009 to 2013, with the process beginning with average daily membership numbers from the first month of the 2008-09 school year and ending with finalizing the alignment by the Board of Directors in May of 2009
• the Board heard a report that the NCHSAA Endowment currently stands at about $7.5 million, with over $100,000 returned to the schools this year from the interest in that fund to offset some of the expense of catastrophic insurance. In addition, the schools have received over $4 million from their own shares of the Endowment games that they are allowed to play since the program began a decade ago.
• a pay increase plan for officials was approved, to be phased in over a four-year period, starting with a $10 increase for football, $5 for baseball, and $5 for softball for 2006-07
• the Board also approved a plan, as it has done before, to return additional monies to schools for excessive travel or deficit games in the football playoffs if the receipts from this year’s playoffs allow such a return.
The next Board of Directors meeting is scheduled to be held in Raleigh in early May.
