Sometimes people forget that the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association is not one guy in Renton, or even a small group of people, legislating over high school sports and activities throughout the state.
The WIAA is a representative body made up of member schools. And each year, those members are allowed to proposed amendments to the WIAA rulebook and then vote on those proposals.
That is what will happen beginning this week as schools look at changes for the 2016-17 school year.
Here are a few of this year’s batch of proposals.
Probably the most significant is the aforementioned proposal that would allow schools that have 60 percent or more of its student body on a free or reduced lunch program to opt down one classification during the next classification process.
It seems like a sound proposal. But even if passed, schools wouldn’t see relief until 2020 as that is the next time schools will be reclassified.
Two other proposals concern athlete safety.
Currently, the rules in baseball limit the number of innings a pitcher can throw. The new proposal will base pitching limit on pitch count instead. Makes sense.
The other rule proposal is looking to limit the amount of contact football players are subjected to in a week. The proposal is that, after the first contest of the season, players will be limited to two contact practices per week excluding contests.
Again, it seems to make sense. But the phrase to look at here is “excluding contests.”
Some years ago, football teams would complete their nine-game regular season. Then teams that qualified would play district playoff games on the Tuesday after the last Friday of the regular season. These were full games, not Kansas Plan tiebreakers.
The winners of the Tuesday playoffs would advance to state playoff games the subsequent Saturday.
The WIAA, realizing how nutty this was, added a week to the season, allowing football teams to start sooner than other fall sports to help eliminate these Tuesday playoffs.
But there are still districts in the state that have these Tuesday playoff games. So if the WIAA is starting to limit contact practices, maybe it should take a hard look at eliminating these Tuesday playoffs, too.
And one more proposal would allow 2B and 1B schools to use eighth graders on varsity teams when squad sizes are at or below specified numbers. This proposal also included an addendum that would remove the word “salvage” from the language of the original rule, as in “salvage the team.”
There are actually a couple of other proposals that also remove the word “salvage.” I can only imagine that some people felt the word salvage made it feel as if these teams were being pulled from the junkpile.
As we often have to deal with word sensitivity, I can only imagine there are eyes rolling right now in the heads of sportswriters across the state.
I could go on about word sensitivity, but I have to salvage this column by highlighting a couple of key events this week.
This week
BASEBALL: Mountain View and Camas, in a virtual tie for first in the 4A Greater St. Helens League, meet at Camas on Friday.
SOFTBALL: Soggy fields on Friday caused postponements that will create a busy week in the 2A GSHL with a full allotment of games on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.
SOCCER: Camas will look to avenge its only loss of the season when the Papermakers host Skyview on Wednesday.
GOLF: The Prairie Invitational will bring together many of the teams in Southwest Washington at The Cedars on Salmon Creek on Wednesday.
Tim Martinez is the assistant sports editor/prep coordinator for The Columbian. He can be reached at 360-735-4538, tim.martinez@columbian.com or follow his Twitter handle @360TMart
