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quote:Practical measure?
New VHSL rule allows nearly year-round practice
By Jeremy Stafford - jstafford@nvdaily.com
Posted July 13, 2011
In late February the Virginia High School League approved a measure that may jump-start the evolution of local athletics even as it begins the slow, inevitable decimation of the versatile three-sport athlete.
The measure will take effect Aug. 1, and will enable high school coaches to work with their athletes nearly year-round -- with the exception of four dead periods and every Sunday.
At the start of each athletics season -- that is, from the first practice of an in-season sport -- out-of-season practices will observe a 10-day dead period, contrived to allow athletes time to try out for, and practice with, an in-season team without having to be concerned with an out-of-season sport. There are three such dead periods.
A fourth dead period will occur during the first week of the National Federation of State High School Association's standardized calendar year, which typically starts in early July.
During a dead period, a coach is allowed no contact with his athletes within the context of that coach's respective sport.
For the remaining 270-plus days of the year, a coach can hold practices with a team or teaching clinics with an individual.
Under the original statute, which allowed for no out-of-season practices, but did allow for conditioning sessions and open gyms, it became too difficult for the VHSL to monitor coaches' involvement with teams in the offseason. Furthermore, it was difficult to distinguish a team practice from a conditioning session.
The benefits of this new measure are obvious: "It gives kids the opportunity to grow and develop," Sherando girls basketball coach Kevin Reed said. "It's no different from when a kid is allowed to be tutored in the summer, or to get extra help.
"I don't know why it's taken so long to be applied to sports."
The rule change allows Reed, about to begin his second season at Sherando, the luxury of building off the success the Warriors saw when they set a school record for wins in a season last year. It also allows athletes like Sherando rising senior Morgan Sirbaugh, who is looking to play basketball in college, the convenience of being able to work with Reed whenever she'd like.
But here's the problem: While the VHSL's rule requires out-of-season teams to remain idle only during the four dead periods, it also allows for regions and districts to establish further sanctions on their own schools. In all of Group AA, only Region II has done so.
Under the Region II sanction, teams in the Northwestern, Dulles, Evergreen and Jefferson districts are allowed only 15 days of out-of-season practice prior to a season, 15 days of practice following a season, and 10 days of practice during the summer.
To recap: Region I, III and IV teams must remain idle for a minimum of about 40 days; Region II teams are given a maximum of only 40 days of extra practice.
This puts local teams at a severe disadvantage should they make the Group AA state tournament.
"It could be tough to handle once you get out of our region," Millbrook s****r coach Keith Kilmer said. "It could be an unfair advantage."
Kilmer further explained that there are wrinkles in the measure that the VHSL, and the various regions, are still ironing out. Because the rule change is so radical, and because it affects athletics programs so substantially, nothing, as of yet, is impervious to modification.
"I'll be honest, at this point I don't think anything has been, 'OK, here we go, this is how it's going to be,'" Kilmer said. "I think they're still adjusting it and massaging it and manipulating it to what is best for the students.
"I really think they're trying to make this as good as they can, and as fair as they can."
In any case, having an extra month of practice, even if it is demonstrably minute compared with the allowance given every other school in Group AA, is still enthralling for coaches, and it still provides teams and players the opportunity to improve tremendously in the offseason.
"Until this point we've only been allowed to do conditioning and open gyms," Handley boys s****r coach Cosmo Balio said. "Now you're telling me I get a month's worth of practice through the offseason?
"I'm excited to do that."
What might not be so exciting is the effect this practice mandate may have on the three-sport athletes, which make up so many of this area's teams. Because such athletes might lack the time and flexibility to participate in out-of-season practices, they could be more inclined to specialize in only one or two sports.
Calls made to Region B athletic directors, whose schools are far more dependent on multiple-sport athletes than are Group AA schools, were not returned.
But perhaps this single-sport specialization has been a developing trend that's only now beginning to gain momentum -- or at least notice.
"Personally, I think that's where kids have been headed before this rule was put in place," Reed said. "Coming from Loudoun County, it's natural for a kid to be sport specific. Anytime a kid has a goal to play in college, they should be sport specific.
"But I take pride in, after nine years of coaching high school, I've never told a kid that they shouldn't play a sport."
Not every coach has such a fair-minded demeanor. Indeed, while many area coaches are thrilled about the opportunity to spend an extra month with their teams, there's a growing concern that they'll lose many of their multiple-sport athletes -- sometimes at the behest of another coach.
The concern works like this: While out-of-season practices aren't mandatory, an athlete's failure to attend a certain number of practices -- even if the athlete is committed to an in-season sport -- could presumably affect playing time or even starting positions in athletic seasons yet-to-come.
"I think there's a possibility, unfortunately, that there could be some coaches that might want to persuade players to come to one sport," Kilmer said. "I personally have found that players play better for me when they go off and play other things, and then come back to me.
"There's a risk that I could lose some players -- that's always a possibility."
Perhaps just as worrying is the concern that those athletes who decide to become sport specific might quickly lose their enthusiasm for a sport they at one time played only a handful of months out of the year. This is particularly troubling for volleyball, s****r and basketball players, who often play on club and Amateur Athletic Union teams in addition to their high school teams.
This kind of focus can lead to overexposure -- the athlete gets burned out, as they say -- and can hinder the performance of an entire team.
"Are we going to over train them?" Balio said. "There may not be a difference between a kid coming in Sept. 3 to gear up for a season versus the day we have real tryouts -- I don't think that excitement is there.
"Would the football team throw pads on in February? There's lots of question marks that need answered."
At least one concern has been dealt with recently.
Under the initial measure, if a high school coach coached even one of his high school athletes on a club or AAU team, the practices for that club team would count toward the 40 days of out-of-season practices allotted to that coach under the Region II statute.
Kilmer was most affected by this: He said about a third of his Winchester United s****r team comprises Millbrook s****r players. His club s****r practices this coming fall, under the February rule, would have consumed the entirety of Millbrook's allotted out-of-season practices.
Last week, the rule was changed to allow coaches like Kilmer the chance to remain with their club teams without penalty, as long as the club team is not made entirely of that coach's high school team.
"I think there was a strong outcry from Loudoun County people more than anybody," Kilmer said. "Nothing's written in stone yet -- [the VHSL] is still waiting to get people's thoughts, and I'll applaud them for that.
"They didn't jump and say, 'This is the bible, this is what it is.'"
But there's little the VHSL can do to deter athletes from becoming sport specific. With so many athletes hoping to garner athletic scholarships in college, it only makes sense, now that they have the opportunity, to practice one sport year-round with their coach and team.
Sherando graduate Krista DeCeault, for example, at one time ran cross country in the fall, played basketball in the winter, and played s****r in the spring. By her senior year she had given up basketball and s****r and participated instead with Sherando's indoor and outdoor track teams. By becoming sport specific, she won a Group AA state title in the 3,200 -meter run and earned a Division I scholarship to run at Illinois State University.
This, it seems, will become the norm in the coming years. And the predomination of the three-sport athlete, once a boasting point for local athletics, is quickly fading out of existence, and may soon become an obsolete peculiarity.
"It's really going to go by the wayside in a couple years," Balio said. "I don't know if it's the parents' mindset of, 'We need to focus on one sport if we want to have a college scholarship,' or not. Sure, we want that special kid that has honed his skills, but we'll also take the all-around athlete.
"That's the way our society has gone -- we're so quick to place accolades on kids when they're 10, and we're not giving them a chance to expand. ... It's weird that we're doing that to kids, and this rule enhances it."
quote:Can someone explain the coaching rules from vhsl
quote:Originally posted by TCWPreps:
Would it not be easier just to have no rule and practice as you please?
Whats going to happen now that the regions have been eliminated ?
