MSHSAA rolls back summer contact days to 20

All 11 proposals to the Missouri State High School Athletics Association Constitution and By-laws were passed in May at the annual MSHSAA election.

Communications director Jason West spoke in detail about this year's revisions and several new changes to championship venues in a phone interview Monday.

"There were a few things on the ballot that were more editorial changes to the by-laws," West said. "One was with the constitution and kind of outlining the requirements for membership and putting in a few more requirements, meeting with office staff for compliance purposes, things like that, instead of just saying, 'We want to be a member. Here are our registration fees.'"

Changes to the constitution included establishing an application process, a timeline and a training requirement for schools seeking MSHSAA membership. MSHSAA requires 2/3 of a majority vote for changes to the constitution, and each of the three proposals was approved by at least 390 votes.

Of the eight changes to the by-laws, a proposal to reduce the number of contact days in the summer that are allowed per sport, per gender from 25 to 20 was approved. The amendment was the most divisive, receiving 281 votes in favor and 213 against. It will become effective next summer.

"One of the rationales for it was that with the 25 days, the multi-sport athlete was losing more and more summer. One of the thoughts in implementing the 25 days of contact was to give more sports the ability to have interaction with their students during the summer," West said. "In the past, baseball and softball were really the only ones that had any contact with their kids [in the summer]. *... Instead of gaining more days to enjoy your summer vacation, coaches, players and administrators were still losing days. That was one of the thoughts of dialing it back down to 20 days."

A proposal was passed to allow a student-athlete to attend one camp, clinic or group lesson during the sport season, under certain conditions, without being accompanied by an approved school coach.

"In basketball season, a basketball player wants to attend a camp at a university or a college that's not a team camp and is just an individual camp. In the past, any time a student-athlete wanted to attend a camp, they had to be accompanied by a coach or other school personnel," West said. "This kind of loosens that back a little bit and allows a kid to attend one camp or clinic or group lesson during that sport season under certain conditions, having permission from the school to miss any action or anything like that."

The appeal of an ejection was reiterated by a proposal to add language requiring any appeal to take place at the contest of the site at the time of occurrence and that the decision made at the site is final. The proposal was passed by 150 votes.

The change removes postgame appeals of ejections to MSHSAA.

"If a player gets ejected during a football game on a Friday night, the first thing Monday morning people are calling the office saying, 'We want to appeal this. You need to look at the video,' and there is no appeal. So this is cleaning up that language and making sure that everyone knows if you don't like the ejection, then you need to appeal to the game officials that night and state your case to have them consider it at the game," West said. "You can't wait until the next day to call our office or to call an official up and have them change it when he calls our office because once you leave the field, the decision is final."

Several proposals regarding scheduling options were also passed, including a proposal to allow an option of 20 games and one tournament for girls softball at the high school level.

"That kind of puts softball in line with baseball in adding another scheduling option," West said. "If you only want to play in one tournament, then you can have 20 regular season games."

For a complete list of this year's proposals, visit http://www.mshsaa.org/2015AnnualBallotFinalResults.aspx.

Championship venues

The boys and girls soccer championships will take place at different venues in 2015-16.

The boys soccer championships will be held in the fall at World Wide Technology Soccer Park in Fenton, Missouri. The championships, which are now divided into four classes, will be held on two separate weekends.

"The first weekend, which is a week earlier than the championships have been, will be the same weekend as cross country and swimming and diving. That will be Class 1 and 2," West said. "Then the following weekend will be Class 3 and 4, so we'll be down to one site, one field and will play all eight games on that one field."

The girls soccer championships will take place at Swope Soccer Village in Kansas City, Missouri. Swope is the practice facility for Sporting Kansas City and the home to FC Kansas City. It is also the host of the Big 12 Soccer Championship.

"In the spring for the girls championships, that will be spread out over four days, so instead of just playing on Friday and Saturday, it will be Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday with Class 1 and 2 playing on Wednesday and Thursday and Class 3 and 4 on Friday and Saturday," West said.

West said the venue changes were administrative actions.

"We put out [requests for proposal] on the championships because this coming year was scheduled to be the last year we were at Blue Springs," he said. "*... We asked, 'If you were available, would you be willing to do the 2015-16 season as well as the next four?' Both of these venues said they would be able to host it."

The spring softball championships were held at Three Rivers College for the first two seasons but will be moved to the Killian Complex in Springfield, Missouri, where the fall softball championships are held.

West also said the track and field championships could be moved to Jefferson City High School in Jefferson City, Missouri. The championships were held last year at Lincoln University in Jefferson City.