What stood out at April NJSIAA meeting, including basketball changes
· Yahoo Sports
ROBBINSVILLE − In a move that would fundamentally alter both sports, the NJSIAA will vote on instituting shot clocks for lacrosse and basketball at the annual membership meeting on May 4.
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And not even New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association executive director Colleen Maguire has an idea of how the vote will go.
“I have to say I have no idea which way it’s going,” Maguire said after the April 15 meeting of the NJSIAA executive committee. “I think there are pockets in the state that are strongly for or strongly against, and there are some where you can’t get a good pulse. I have to say no real strong feeling either way.”
Athletic directors from every NJSIAA member school (totaling more than 400) are summoned to one meeting each year to vote on major legislative and rule changes.
This year, there will be four items on the ballot. The two items not related to shot clocks, which are both expected to pass easily, are approving flag football as an officially-sanctioned NJSIAA sport, and allowing girls wrestling teams to form tri-ops (three schools feeding into one team).
When it comes to shot clocks, there has been a lot of discussion. There appears to be a split between athletic directors who worry about purchasing the equipment and finding officials to run it and coaches who feel like the game is enhanced with shot clocks and more representative of the college level.
“This is why it’s going to the membership,” Maguire said. “I don’t want to make the decision for 415 basketball schools, because they are the ones who have to operate it and pay for it.”
Maguire noted that this meeting will be interesting without an already-solid outcome.
“We will actually have an exciting annual meeting,” she said with a laugh. “This will be real fun.”
Basketball teams moving up
Maguire announced that nine boys basketball teams and four girls basketball teams will be moving up to a higher group based on their success over the last two years. This is part of the new competitive balance formula that forces public schools with non-traditional enrollment policies move up if they reach a certain success standard.
The nine boys programs are: Camden (moving to Group 3), Colonia (Group 4), Colts Neck (Group 4), Essex County Tech (Group 2), Shabazz (Group 2), Manasquan (Group 3), Middle Township (Group 3), Ramapo (Group 4) and Thrive Charter (Group 2).
The four girls programs are: Arts (Group 2), Cherry Hill West (Group 4), Manasquan (Group 3) and Middle Township (Group 3).
As of now, the only three sports subject to the competitive balance formula are football and boys and girls basketball. It is possible that the NJSIAA will also implement it in other sports.
“So far, no [other sport] committees have brought it up,” Maguire said. “We are locked in with these three, because we want to learn from it and make sure it’s effective and we will wait to see. No one has rushed to jump on it, but no one has really seen it yet. I think next year when people start to see it, other sports may start asking for it.”
Snake seeding returns for football
There were multiple program review changes approved by the committee connected to high school football.
The biggest is the restoration of the traditional “snake” seeding for the public-school playoffs, where the 16 teams in each super section are bracketed 1-4-5-8-9-12-13-16 and 2-3-6-7-10-11-14-15.
Last year, in an attempt to ease travel concerns, the NJSIAA tried to apply northing numbers (a schools true location on a north/south axis) after seeds were made, but that resulted in unbalanced sections.
The other big move involving football will be removing teams that play in the Ivy Division of the Super Football Conference from the North/South divide in order to create more-equal super-sections of playoff-eligible teams. Ivy Division teams forfeit the opportunity to enter the state playoffs and only play against each other while attempting to restore participation and competition to their programs.
Maguire also warned football programs that they are not allowed to promote their spring workouts on social media (players included) and that the workouts can only happen if a college coach is present.
Play-in round for volleyball?
The NJSIAA will tinker with the format of the girls volleyball state tournament and look to potential add a play-in round in sections that have a large number of schools playing the sport – particularly in Group 1, where charter schools inflate the number of teams in the section.
“It would kind of be like March Madness with your play-in game to get to the 16-team bracket,” Maguire said. “How many? We will figure out what the committee thinks is reasonable.”
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJSIAA April meeting includes shot clock and basketball groups