First, the new coaches and new schools / stadium info will have their own pages (hopefully by noon Sunday).
Next, we have some rule changes.
The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) Football Rules Committee approved not only 12 rule changes at their Feb. meeting in Indianapolis, they also decided to emphasize concussions, so I will, too.
Effective this season, in ALL sports, any player who shows signs, symptoms or behaviors associated with a concussion must be removed from the game and can't return until cleared by an appropriate health-care professional.
Previously, officials removed a player if s/he was "unconscious or apparently unconscious", which meant players who were dizzy, off-balance, and/or confused, which are all signs of concussions, were allowed to continue playing.
New guidelines set forth by the NFHS recommends that players, parents, coaches and officials take a free, 20-minute online course called “Concussion In Sport — What you Need to Know".
Here's what's being said in Raleigh, Charlotte, Raleigh (again) and Sevierville.
More information, including a basic, but slow loading (1.6 meg PDF file) concussion fact sheet, is available from the Brain Injury Association of Virginia.
And the free course is at NHFSlearn.com. (I do NOT like the way this is set up... it should be a LOT more user-friendly. For some reason, you MUST register to access the freebie. Luckily, the Nebraska School Activities Association has step-by-step details on page 2.)
Back to the rules changes.... here's an overview :
9-4-3k clarifies/expands the horse-collar tackle rule so it can be called when a player is
no longer a "runner", such as after a fumble or a TD, or is tackled out-of-bounds
3-2-2 limits the number "coin toss captains" to four per team
3-7-1 changes the timeframe for replacing players from "immediately" to "within :03"
(note... the "clock" is supposed to start when the outgoing player is told
he's being replaced... he then has :03 to move towards the sidelines...
no way he can be off the field in 3 seconds. Also, breaking the huddle
with 12 men [or more] IS legal, if the 12th guy [or more] heads off the
field within that :03 window.)
3-1-2; 1-7 gives states the power to expand the "slaughter rule" so that a game can end
anytime a specific margin is attained, instead of after a minimum of 2 quarters
(so a game no longer HAS to reach half-time to be official)
8-2 (& others) clarifies fouls on scoring plays that have succeeding spot enforcement
(so a penalty on a TD play can be enforced on the kickoff instead of the XP)
? 3-3-4 ? If a quarter ends due to a safety on a penalty (like intentional grounding
in the end zone), the quarter ends there, instead of after the kickoff
Head coaches can now be flagged for more things....
"Unsportsmanlike" if the team isn't on the field for warm-ups before half-time ends
"personal foul" if an official runs into a sideline photographer or cheerleader
"Unsportsmanlike" if the PA announcer says FUMBLE during a play (they aren't there
to do play-by-play, so this could be "using electronic equipment for coaching")
Officials are also going to watch more closely for "assisting the runner"
Here's the NFHS (National Federation of State High School Associations) rule changes for 2010, along with an independently bolded press release (unfortunately, the bcfoa let me down this year).
The VHSL has made some changes because of unusual situations they encountered last year.
First, they've "clarified" a rule that I thought seemed pretty cut-and-dried to start with. The VHSL uses a spreadsheet for the ratings, and it was set up to only show 1 decimal place, meaning .2222 showed up as .2, which is the same as .2000. The tie-breakers were then applied, and the .2222 team ended up with a lower seed in the Region B playoffs. Rule 68-8-2 now says that the ratings will be carried out to five rounded decimal places.
While we're talkng ratings, 68-6-1 (2) provides a new set of ratings scale numbers to be used when a VA team goes to WV and the game ends in a tie. Seems that WV has a 3-OT limit, and we've been lucky we haven't bumped into that yet.
Second, last year's big snow that wrecked havoc on the state semi-finals (and the state in general) has led to the creation of Rule 68-8-7, which says the state semi-final games will now have multiple back-up sites in case the "host" field is in unplayable condition. Each Region will have a "selection team" that will create a list of at least 3 alternate locations and submit it to Charlottesville by Oct. 1st. So I guess that means 4 or 5 sites will need to be picked, since no one will know on Oct. 1st exactly who'll be in the semis.
(First you've heard of this, huh? Well, here's why... this was submitted by a sub-committee back at the Feb. meeting, so the Exec. Committee's minutes only show that the sub-committee's minutes were accepted. THEN someone completely forgot about it, and it wasn't put in the new Handbook. Brilliant. Brilliant, I tells ya! Here's the VHSL release.)
Third, 27-12-2 (6) has been added to permit a 2-hour maximum practice on a Sunday, in any sport but golf, if a post-season contest is to be held on a Monday, and "extreme circumstances" (re: snow) leads to an "extended loss of practice prior" to the contest.
The VHSL also gave "relief" to some schools that lost a large chuck of students due to a new school opening nearby this Fall. Loudoun Valley lost 1130 kids and drops to Div. 5; Spotswood lost 530 kids and drops to Div. 3. J.R. Tucker was denied a drop to Div. 5 because they lost just 174 kids.
Beamer-ball will be the only game in Lane Stadium this Fall. The VHSL returns the Group AA Division 3 and 4 championship games to Liberty University's Williams Stadium, ending the one-year "emergency stopover" at Va. Tech. (At least I THINK so, since the VHSL forgot to post that, too (2).) Williams' renovation project has increased seating from 12,000 to about 20,000, with another 10,000 seats to be added after this season.
More Roanoke-area schools will be kicking-off at 7 p.m. this year, as the Western Valley, Blue Ridge and Pioneer Districts have all made the move.
Wrestling fans... here's a rule change you should know about... Anyone that forfeits a post-season match wihout a good reason will be assessed an unsportsmanlike penalty, making them ineligible the rest of the season.
Volleyball, baseball and softball fans... Group A is now dividing these sports into Divisions for post-season play.
Across the state lines...
West Virginia HS football players will be sporting a helmet decal that's a white circle with a black #29 in the middle to honor the 29 coal miners killed in the April 5th Upper Big Branch Mine explosion.
Tenn. has tweaked their less-than-1-year-old "Z plan" for the playoffs. While the number of qualifiers stays the same, the automatic bids have changed from half the teams in every Division in every District to just the top 2 teams in each District. Wildcard teams will be selected at the state level with overall record being the first step. Here's an overview.
And South of the border... NC has tweaked their playoff structure to mimic VA (in a weird coincidence, Group A is changing their playoff structure to mimic NC... more on that below).
Someone down there figured out that if they had used a "pod" structure for the 2009 post-season, schools would have saved 10,000 miles of travel in the first 2 rounds (assuming the higher seeds had advanced in round 1). So instead of the usual 1 vs. 16 format, they're going to have 4-team "pods" for the playoffs this year, based on geography.
And they decided to shorten the regular season by 1 week at the end of next season, in an effort to start basketball "on time". So teams that play an Endowment Game in addition to their 10 regular-season games won't have a bye week.
Some major changes are planned for next year in Group A... football Divisions will no longer be determined at the REGIONAL level, but at the STATE level, so that any school with an ADM of 475 students or more will be Division 2 & 474 and fewer will be Div. 1.
But if the schools that make up Regions C and D were put into the West Sectional, and Region A and B schools were in the East, the Divisional make-up of each half would be a bit lopsided when it comes to the number of schools. So, some Region B schools will be placed in the West in Division 2 (probably the Dogwood teams), and some Region C schools will go to the East for Division 1 (probably the Pioneer & Three Rivers teams).
In each sectional, 16 teams will be selected based on their ratings (District champs won't get an automatic bid or higher seeding priority) and the post-season will be 5 weeks long. This also eliminates ALL Regional championship games in football.
If you've got some more time to kill, and you haven't seen it yet, check out my take of the DRASTIC change to the Group A playoff structure.
Also next year, Group A will be gaining a couple of SWD schools... Grundy & Graham, but they're going to different Regions... the Wave will join the BDD (D) while the G-Men will join the Hogo (oops) Mtn. Empire (C).
And NASCAR's race weekends will be different in SW VA next year, as both the Bristol and Martinsville Fall races have been pushed back a week, meaning Bristol's race will be Aug. 27th, or opening weekend in Va. . (At least I THINK so, since the VHSL forgot to post that, too (3).)