Weston Irons Posted October 15, 2014
In a move to avoid high hotel costs for state championships in Las Vegas, the NIAA voted to shorten spring sports by one week to avoid playing championships over Memorial Day weekend. As a response, Division 1 proposed starting the spring sports season one week early to gain the lost week back. The NIAA recently approved this early start date for the Spring of 2015.
Coming from Winnemucca, we have a very limited number of athletes; therefore there are many two and three-sport athletes. With this early start, athletes who do both winter sports and spring sports will not get a break in between the seasons and might not even play one or the other for that reason. But that is just one of the setbacks this early start presents.
Another problem that could spark some debate is for athletes who don’t participate in winter sports but do participate in spring sports. They could try out for a team and get cut, but then a winter sports athlete who couldn’t make the tryout comes along a week later and makes the team. Obviously, the athlete who got cut isn’t going to be very happy.
Other problems that could possibly occur are: is the weather going to be good enough at the time of the start of the season? Will daylight savings time affect the time of day that these games are played? How will athletes who participate in winter sports be able to get in their required amount of practice in time for the first and possibly important games or events? The list continues on and on.
Although the early start seems to be the best answer to avoid the high hotel costs, it seems to present many problems, especially for smaller schools (which Lowry is.) But now, all we can do is wait and see how things work out. If we’re lucky, this early start won’t be so bad after all.
