AHSAA Central Board of Control Meeting approves several changes for the upcoming sports seasons

AHSAA

by WAKA Action 8 News

The ASHAA Central Board of Control approved several changes in many sports at their April Meeting. Below are changes approved for each sport.

Football: Approved the starting date for middle school football contests to be aligned with junior varsity starting dates which are the first Monday after varsity teams are allowed to play.
Cross Country: Insured the sport’s season gets its 10 weeks and also waived the ban on runners using GPS watches.
Volleyball: Approved the use of 1 official in a sub-varsity contest only when the officials association informs the school it is unable to assign the required minimum of two.
Basketball: Approved giving schools the option of using a shot clock for regular-season non-area games – only if both schools agree. The CBOC also approved allowing the AHSAA to use a shot clock in its summer classics  and the North-South All-Star Games as a means to gather data and help train the personnel needed to operate the shot clock. Class 7A schools were also approved to extend their regular season one week since those schools do not compete in the sub-regional round of the playoffs.
Flag Football: Approved 15 dates for varsity/junior varsity and 10 dates for middle schools. Also approved developing a regular season and playoff format that corresponds with padded football, but also approved allowing flag teams to play multiple playoff games at one site on the same date to reduce travel.
Swimming: Approved eliminating section meets and using regular-season times to determine qualifiers for the state meet – similar to the current indoor track format.
Bowling: Approved changing the playoff format currently used in section and state meets to follow the regular-season format. Also approved was making the championship round a double-elimination round and extended the playing dates from 20 to 22.
Wrestling: Approved adjusting the section and state wrestling schedules to accommodate girls’ wrestling. Also, in the sport of wrestling, approved insuring that the wrestling placement in section tournaments receive higher consideration in the final seeding for the state meet and determined if a wrestler is disqualified in the section meet, that place in the state meet would result in a forfeit. For the wrestling duals, the CBOC approved allowing cross-bracketing in playoff format.
The Central Board also elected officers for the 2024-25 school year with District 1 member Terry Curtis being elected president, and Pelham’s Kim Kiel from District 5 was elected vice president. They take office on July 1.
The AHSAA Legislative Council will meet Wednesday afternoon to vote on a number of proposals submitted by the member schools.

(Information from the ASHAA Press Release)