Legislative Council preview: Baseball season may move back; 4A basketball wants 48-team bracket again
AURORA — Baseball’s season could look a bit different in 2016.
One proposal set to be voted on at the April Legislative Council meeting seeks to expand the regular season to 23 games. A second wants to push the start date, as well as the state championships, back one week.
The 23-game proposal comes from the Centennial League. Currently, teams are allowed to play a maximum of 19 games. The proposal would allow for more flexibility in scheduling, including entering out-of-state tournaments, according to the rationale submitted from the league.
There is a mirrored proposal, also from the Centennial, that would expand softball’s season to 23 games. Both sports also have additional proposals that would expanded the maximum number of innings an individual player is allowed to participate in, should the new maximum games limit pass.
Meanwhile, the start-date proposal is directly aimed at finding better weather at the start of the season. According to the rationale for the proposal, which was submitted by the Southwestern League, “a later start date and a later competition date would have a better success rate of completing the season without several rescheduled dates at the end of the season.”
This season, practice started on Feb. 23 and games on March 5. Had this proposal been in effect, practice would have started on March 2 and games on March 12.
With that change, the final weekend of state championships (Class 3A, 4A and 5A) would fall on June 3-4 in the 2016 season. It would also be in June (2-3) for the 2017 season.
The baseball committee supports both the expansion and the start-date proposals. The softball committee hasn’t had the chance to discuss the expansion of the regular season.
Each of the proposals will require simple majority approval from the Legislative Council.
4A basketball proposal seeks a return to 48-team bracket
Last year, Class 4A basketball narrowed its 48-team postseason field to 32. Well, now there’s a proposal that seeks a return to 48 teams as soon as next season.
The Tri-Valley League put the proposal forward, saying that a return to 48 would bring it more in line with other classes in terms of the percentage of teams qualifying for the postseason.
The proposal requires a majority approval from the Legislative Council.
A separate proposal, which came from the Continental League, seeks to give Ponderosa special consideration to qualify for the 4A field. Ponderosa plays in a 5A league (the Continental), so the proposal wants them to automatically qualify if they win 10 or more games against 4A or 5A opponents.
Notables
- A proposal from the Union Pacific League wants to add an eighth classification (6A) to football.
- The official proposal seeking to add third classifications for girls golf, girls swimming and diving, and girls tennis will be on the agenda.
- The hockey sport report, and its recommendation to add junior varsity programs, will go to a vote. Along with that is the reduction to a 20-player maximum roster size.
- In volleyball, another proposal from the Union Pacific seeks to return to the previous schedule used at state volleyball. In that schedule, the top seed in each pool has the potential to play three times on Saturday, but it also sets up the Nos. 1 a 2 seeds to play in the final match of pool play. This would create fewer matches that don’t matter in terms of the semifinals.
- The swim and dive committee’s recommendation to allow unlimited entrants from individual schools will be voted upon.
- The wrestling committee has recommended using a new plan for weight management. That will be voted on.
