Shrinking budgets altering state playoffs

Adam Candee

Monday, March 10, 2003 | 9:57 a.m.

Say goodbye to Nevada prep athletics as you know them, at least for the next few years while school district budgets continue to shrink.

That will be the prevailing tone to this week's Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association meetings at Sierra Vista High School, and also to three public input sessions on the Clark County School District's budget crisis.

A vote on the immediate future of state playoff formats will likely occur at the NIAA sessions, which begin Wednesday at 9 a.m. Public input is allowed at these meetings.

Athletic administrators and directors from across Nevada met during the state basketball tournament in Reno 10 days ago and received the grim news that fewer teams will make the state playoffs as school districts look to reduce travel costs.

"It's not just an athletics issue," CCSD athletic director Larry McKay said. "We're just a small portion of the whole budget."

NIAA director Dr. Jerry Hughes and McKay initially proposed a reduction from the standard eight-team format to a two-team setup with a Northern and a Southern champion playing a one-game state championship.

That idea is now evolving into a compromise of a four-team state playoff, favored by coaches and administrators, that McKay said "seems to be gaining the most support."

In that format, two Northern teams and two Southern teams would qualify when the playoffs are held in Reno, while three Southern teams and one Northern team would make it when the tournament is held in Las Vegas. State playoffs would alternate between North and South every year.

Football, however, might still play a North vs. South championship, at the urging of Southern coaches who do not want a team with a playoff loss to make the state tournament.

McKay estimates that going to the four-team setup and reducing the number of individual state qualifiers in sports such as wrestling, swimming and track could annually save the district as much as $150,000.

"So much depends on what the legislature does (with the state budget)," McKay said. "That's why it's so hard to make plans."

There are five proposals on the table, including the aforementioned two-team playoff and a rehash of the 4A/5A classification split. NIAA and CCSD officials privately say that the four-team setup is the most likely conclusion.

The CCSD meetings begin tonight at Clark High School at 6, and continue at the same time Tuesday at Green Valley and Wednesday at Chaparral. The sessions will allow the public to rank its funding priorities for the coming school year, and the $6.3 million budget for high school athletics is a potential target for reduced money.

"Everything is a target because of the severity if they don't pass any kind of tax increase," McKay said.

That severity may lead to the first frank public discussion of a "pay for play" situation. That option will be presented at the CCSD meetings.

"They're going to start looking at paying to play," McKay said. "We've never presented it to the masses, but we certainly have discussed it."

McKay said reductions in freshman and junior varsity programs, as well as the number of games played each season, could be looked at as budget fixes. He said that specific cuts are difficult to look at until a final budget number is in.