High school sports formula doesn’t add up for some Las Vegas teams

By Ray Brewer (contact)

Sunday, April 10, 2016 | 2 a.m.

Eldorado High basketball players raced to half court to celebrate a second consecutive playoff win in the final seconds. They jumped up and down with supporters and took pictures, savoring the glory of their run to February’s Sunrise regional championship game.

After winning only four games the previous year, they hadn’t been expected to make the playoffs. Most people predicted a similar finish to other teams at Eldorado: placing among the worst in the region. But the Sundevils kept winning, including seven of 13 victories by fewer than five points.

For school administrators at Eldorado, a Title I school in northeast Las Vegas where three-quarters of the 1,900 students receive free or reduced-price lunch and the graduation rate is just 65 percent, the success was needed. The achievements could build student morale and show that with a little hard work and determination, anything is possible.

“It builds school pride. And when I build school pride, I graduate kids,” said Dave Wilson, Eldorado’s principal.

But as crazy as it sounds, the Sundevils might have been better off having another four-win season. The playoff victories gave Eldorado — all of its sports, not just basketball — enough points on the Nevada rubric to remain in the large-school classification this summer when leagues are realigned.

Had the team struggled, the school would have dropped to Division I-A to compete against such small-town schools as Boulder City or Pahrump Valley, or other Title I schools in Las Vegas, such as Western and Chaparral. Instead, Eldorado will play against schools with more resources and students, such as Bishop Gorman, Arbor View and Centennial.

The Nevada rubric was created four years ago to give struggling schools a chance to develop their programs. But it couldn’t accommodate all underachieving schools. So while Gorman football has won consecutive mythical national championships, Valley hasn’t won a game in the past two seasons and scored just 70 points last fall. Yet the schools are in the same classification.

Critics of the system don’t have to go far to complain at Eldorado. The Nevada rubric was developed by an administrator with a keen interest in math: Wilson.

How the rubric works

The Nevada rubric is used by the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association to classify schools, taking the finish in all 22 sports — boys and girls — to form a 21-school Division I and a 16-school Division I-A for a two-year cycle. The lowest point earners from Division I are demoted to Division I-A.

The next realignment comes after this school year, when the leagues also will be renamed: Division I will become 4A; Division I-A will be 3A, NIAA Board of Control members decided this month.

In sports with high participation,such as football, basketball and girls volleyball, 40 points can be earned for winning a state championship. For sports such as tennis or golf, the maximum is 10 points. Eldorado earned 10 points for its basketball playoff wins, giving it 17 points over two seasons.

Rules dictate that a school with more than 16 points must stay in Division I. If Bonanza, which has 16 points, or Durango (15 points) reaches the playoffs in baseball or softball, they would earn enough points to stay, as well.

The threshold to leave Division I-A is 149 points. Faith Lutheran, with a state-best 204 points in 2014-15 and more than 100 points through the winter this school year, long has been tabbed for promotion. Clark, which has won three consecutive Division I-A basketball championships and the boys soccer title in the fall, has 185 points through two seasons and also will be promoted.

Sierra Vista, with 119 points, and Spring Valley, with 116, also could be bumped up, depending on how many points spring teams earn. But what happens if Bonanza and/or Durango earns one point in spring? A flaw in the system would emerge, because there wouldn’t be enough teams to move down a level.

The NIAA board, realizing that part of the rubric was flawed, decided to ditch quotas for each league beginning this fall. No longer will one classification need 21 teams and the other 16. Instead, point totals dictate which school plays in each level.

“There are a lot of things going on that we just don’t have answers for, ” said Donnie Nelson, the NIAA’s assistant director.

Wilson is proud of his work as chairman of the realignment committee. Chaparral, which struggled in the top league before the rubric sent it to Division I-A, won its first football playoff game in more than two decades and advanced to the state semifinals last fall.

“We were taking our best mathematical guess,” Wilson said. “I probably should have made the cutoff 20 points because 15 is too low. You have schools getting points here and there for bowling or soccer, and they are crossing the threshold.”

Why not realign sport-by-sport?

The Eldorado football team posted a 4-5 record in 2014 with wins against Chaparral, Sunrise Mountain, Durango and Valley — schools facing similar obstacles. But the Sundevils lost all of their league games to high-enrollment schools, such as Green Valley and Coronado. In some of the games, Eldorado was competitive until halftime. Then the team ran out of energy — most of its key performers played both offense and defense.

Some years, Eldorado’s participation numbers didn’t warrant fielding a team on all three levels — varsity, junior varsity and freshman. One injury, ineligibility or player quitting to get a job could be too much to overcome.

Coaches and administrators have floated the idea of realigning sport-by-sport, moving teams like Eldorado and Valley down in football and promoting Division I-A powers Clark and Desert Pines in basketball. Clark and Desert Pines have represented the South in the state tournament each year of the rubric and rarely have been challenged.

But a sport-by-sport system is impractical, Wilson and other administrators say. On basketball game nights, for instance, a bus takes the boys and girls teams — six in total — to and from the game site. With the lower league featuring teams in the outskirts of Overton or Boulder City, the expense of sending buses to multiple sites would be too much for the tight-budgeted Clark County School District to manage.

“If you were to ask most of my friends, most want to be in a league where they can be competitive,” Wilson said. “It’s not going to happen for all of us.”

The value of a good coach

Eldorado second-year basketball coach Reggie Ingram never considered his program at a disadvantage. He’d put his best five players on the court and take his chances against whatever team was on the schedule.

Never did he complain or seek pity. The end result was different than at other at-risk schools. Ingram’s Sundevils were one game away from the state tournament.

“It’s about finding leaders with vision and a good coach with vision,” Wilson said. “That’s (Ingram). He got those kids to believe in themselves.”

It’s impossible for Wilson’s formula to take into account the merits of a good coach or a star athlete.

Second-year football coach Robert Cutts is attempting to follow Ingram’s lead. Participation in the offseason workout program has been so encouraging that he’s confident the program will have more than 100 players in the fall. Those types of numbers are a must in building a winner, particularly for a team that had a 2-6 season in 2015.

“It’s not like the kids aren’t looking at rosters (of the other teams),” Cutts said. “It’s a mental thing.”

Still, the majority of teams who consistently struggle have one factor in common: coach turnover.

At Desert Oasis, Brad Talich in his first season last fall led the Diamondbacks to seven victories and their first playoff in eight years of existence. Because of consistent turnover — Talich is the sixth coach in the program’s history — Desert Oasis had three consecutive losing seasons and appeared to need time to develop in Division I-A.

The championship game

It was a battle of the haves against the have-nots. Coronado, with an enrollment of about 3,200 students, many from families who live in upscale communities of Henderson, took the court for pregame drills in relatively new gear: matching shoes and warmup outfits. Eldorado’s uniforms had obvious wear, having been passed down from previous seasons.

During pregame introductions, Coronado starters raced onto the floor through a tunnel created by more than 20 cheerleaders. Eldorado had three cheerleaders.

Not only did Coronado end Eldorado’s unlikely playoff run, it did so with relative ease — a 70-32 victory by the mercy rule of a running clock. Supporters again greeted Eldorado players with hugs, but this time, they were hugs of condolence.

If anything, the game highlighted one fact: Even in a season when everything went its way, Eldorado is better suited for Division I-A.

But the formula, the one created by Eldorado’s principal, won’t allow it.

“It’s nice to have a banner to hang on the wall, but at the end, (high school sports) are about allowing children to learn through athletics,” Wilson said.

Ray Brewer can be reached at 702-990-2662 or [email protected]. Follow Ray on Twitter at twitter.com/raybrewer21