NIAA alters scheduling plans for future region golf events

Nick Christensen

Friday, Oct. 15, 2004 | 9:41 a.m.

Future 18-hole regional golf competitions will start no later than 10 a.m., Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association executive director Dr. Jerry Hughes said Thursday.

"We're going to start at 10 or play nine-hole matches," Hughes said. "There are outlying areas that welcome us all the time -- Mesquite, Pahrump, if that's what we have to do. Even Boulder City, after we talked to them, we could have started earlier."

Monday's Sunset Region girls' golf tournament started just before 1 p.m. at the Boulder City Municipal golf course, delayed nearly an hour after the scheduled start. When conditions became too dark at 6:15 p.m., tournament director Jane Schlosser decided that based on NIAA tournament rules, the tournament would be decided on the nine-hole totals.

Hughes decided on Tuesday to instead have the girls return on Wednesday to finish up the course. Resumed play took approximately two more hours for the remainder of the 47 participants to complete all 18 holes.

"The key thing is it's unfair for them to play nine holes when everybody else is playing 18, and up here, they're playing 36," Hughes said from the NIAA's office in Reno. "I think in our rules it says we're going to finish if at all possible."

Hughes said that his decision was also based on the impact of a water main break in Boulder City that held up several of the morning tee times from public play.

The top two schools from each region advance to the state tournament, as well as the top five individual golfers from schools that didn't qualify. Very little changed in that regard, with Bishop Gorman and Palo Verde holding onto first and second as a team, respectively. One golfer, Cimarron-Memorial's Kelsey Voit, qualified in the top five based on the nine-hole results but was bumped by Centennial's Alex Borcherts after 18 holes were completed. The NIAA decided to advance Voit, as well as the sixth-place finishers from the Sunrise and Northern regions to the state tournament.

"We had a couple girls that made it that wouldn't have," Hughes said. "We were going to take everybody, so nobody got eliminated. When these things happen you sit down, you know you're damned if you do and damned if you don't because somebody's not going to like what you do. We do what's the fairest way to do it for the kids. That's what we thought was the fairest way of doing it."

The team trophy and individual medals were awarded to the top five overall finishers after Monday's play, something that Hughes said he didn't know until after he'd made the decision to send the teams back out.

"The worst part of the deal was they already handed out... I wasn't aware they'd already handed out medals and trophies," Hughes said. "If I would have known that, I probably would have said we were going to leave it at nine holes."