New Offseason practice rules adopted by HSL

[BIGcatt]

http://www.thestate.com/2013/04/30/2750208/sc-high-school-league-expands.html The 21 days of practice in Nov. are gone. Spring sports will be able to practice pretty much year round. Can't practice during the 5 weeks at the start of Fall sports and 5 weeks at start of winter sports. What are your thoughts? Good or bad for high school athletics??

 

[COHAZE]

On the whole, a big improvement. The 21 days in November was an idiotic idea from day 1. But, not allowing practice for two weeks right before baseball starts really makes no sense.

This change could allow a young, aggressive coach the opportunity to build a program in the off season. How many will take advantage of the change remains to be seen. The guys that are just picking up paychecks won't bother.

 

[baseball31ne]

Let's see how the coaches between seasons work together with their multiple sport athletes and the out of current season requirements are placed on players and how many multiple sport players go up or get reduced after the implementation.

We shall see how things go. Should be interesting to say the least.

 

[BIGcatt]

I agree with both of you. It is a 100% improvement over the 21 days. One of my concerns as a coach at the 2A level is that we have more mutlisport athletes, I hope this doesnt cause a conflict for the kids. I have 4-5 football players and 3-4 basektball players and one wrestler on my team. I encourage all of my kids to play other sports as long as their academics don't suffer. It will be interesting to see what pressure this puts on these kids.

 

[COHAZE]

It shouldn't be much of an issue at 4A schools. At my son's former high school, I don't think they have had a baseball player who also played wrestled or played basketball in at least 10 years, and usually not over 1-2 per year who play football. There is definitely more potential for issues to arise at smaller schools, which often need multi-sport athletes to be competitive. But, the coaches at smaller schools tend to be more close knit and more willing to work together.

Based on the news report, which is pretty sketchy, it sounds like you're looking at two windows of opportunity, Sept 7 through Nov. 4, and Dec. 9th through Jan. 15th. (I assume the summer is also open, but that's hard to tell without seeing the final rule). Imagine how much skill development you can do with an extra 3 months of off season practice! Now you can take that 6' 6" kid who has never pitched before and try to turn him into a pitcher. Or turn that kid with blazing speed into a hitter. Or take that utility player and turn him into a catcher.

There will no longer be any excuse for not having your kids on an off season throwing program because you can supervise it personally. (Really no excuse for it now, but some guys just don't/won't do it). No more sore arms on the second day of practice. No more waiting weeks for guys to get their arms in shape.

What I will be interested to see is how many coaches will take advantage of the opportunities. It will help some, and hurt others.

Let's face it, head coaches aren't paid enough. Assistants even less, if at all. Most don't do it for the money, but there are some that do. Those are the ones that will hate the rule. They're not going to want to log a bunch of extra hours during the off season when they're already making minimum wage.

If I'm an AD hiring a head coach I'm going to look for a young, ambitious guy who's willing to put in tons of extra hours to build a program. If I'm a head coach, I'm looking for assistants with that mindset.

Until we see the final rule there are still a lot of unanswered questions. Does the change apply during the summer time or just during the school year? Will coaches be allowed to coach their players in games during the off season? If so, under what conditions? The scary thing is that the rule will be written by some SCHSL committee, which frequently results in some ambiguous jibberish that nobody fully understands.

Should be interesting.

 

[LeftyTosser]

Cohaze, great points. It will be interesting to see the separation between real coaches and the ones just trying to collect checks. This should give a nice advantage to schools that are developing players vs. those that just want to field a team. Smart administrations should have a great advantage, if they hire correctly.

 

[Skools]

Another point/problem that has not been brought up is travel ball and high school practice. With the old rules kid's would play fall travel ball from September to the end of October and then go into fall baseball practice with their school.

Now being able to practice in September and October all those kid's are going to miss weekend practices for travel game's and possibly practice during the week for their travel team practice.

Some coaches might be ok with their kid's not showing up to their practice and going to play with their travel team while other coaches may not be ok with it.

 

[LeftyTosser]

Skools, I doubt school coaches will do practices on weekends. When students are already on campus to do them right after school there is really no reason to do weekends. As far as missing travel practices during the week, I doubt that will come into play very often. Most Fall travel teams limit practices to just a hitting session here or there. Fall teams at 14s and up are typically just playing to stay ready for school seasons or to work up in age group. The Summer seasons are when folks are really chasing hardware for these older age groups.

 

[Chicksdigmylongball]

what you will probably see is that high school teams practice during the week and play in travel tourneys on the weekend