CHSAA Legislative Council Meeting Updates


There are good reasons to pay attention to what happens at CHSAA Legislative Council next week.

You (should) already know that the Legislative Council meeting coming up in just over a week will decide whether 2A cross country will be run 6/score 4 or run 6/score 3. That alone is reason enough to pay attention to the outcome of the meeting.

But, there's another reason bubbling to the surface.

If you were a fly on the wall in various football meetings around the state, you'd know that the big topic of conversation there is whether or not Colorado will go with the NFHS calendar where the start of football practice is concerned.

If so, it would put Colorado in alignment with neighboring states like Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Utah. And, it would also mean fall practice starts a week earlier for football.

So what, you say?

The so what of it is the word that's now afoot among ADs. That is, it appears now that if the football proposal passes, there will be a companion proposal introduced to bring all fall sports in alignment with the NFHS calendar. 

And, for cross country--as for other fall sports, that would mean practice starting one week earlier.

Personal opinion: I don't have strong feelings one way or the other about practice starting earlier (kids who have varsity ambitions are generally running the whole summer, anyway), but I do have strong feelings about meets starting earlier. I don't think it helps athletes. Of course, if the proposal passes and the start of competition moves up a week, schools like TCA can always sit out of competition until coaches feel more like their teams are ready to run. Cross country is cool that way. Football, soccer, volleyball, and softball wouldn't enjoy the same kind of latitude there.

It's not on the agenda of this coming session of the Legislative Council, but it is worth reminding track coaches reading this article that the April, 2017, Legislative Council meeting approved track teams to split squads and have more than one meet the week before State. Individual athletes may only compete in one meet that week, but a school may appear in two meets. So, meets like the St. Vrain Invitational, the Grand Junction Tiger, and the Jeffco Elite are now theoretically open to a broader range of teams than in years past.

That's all from here for now. I'll try to keep you posted on all the developments.