11/19/19 – Board Reviews Fall Sports Championships and Ongoing Operations

November 19, 2019 2019-2020 News Releases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 19, 2019

The Board of Control conducted a lengthy review of the recently completed fall sports and each respective championship, while also discussing ongoing operations and issues during the course of its meeting at the KHSAA Offices on Tuesday. Among the actionable items in the meeting, the Board addressed the format of the Swimming & Diving postseason meets and the future placement for Sayre football.

Over the last few years, staff received multiple requests to restructure region diving competitions due in part to facility issues and a shortage of qualified judges without a connection to a specific school. The situation was exacerbated by the expansion to 40 qualifiers in the state diving competition, with 22 at-large participants potentially leading to competitive issues if there is a perception that the judges are not consistent and objective at each meet.

Following a survey of the membership, 75% of respondents voted in favor of staff setting the regional diving competition at three to four “super-regional” type sites, which would be held before the regional swimming meets. The “super-regionals” would seek to have the same judging panel at all competitions to assist with consistency, and points would be earned per region, not super-region. For example, if a combined meet involving Regions 1, 2 and 3 was held, each region would have its own scoring and the points earned would “carry forward” to the regional swim meet for the purpose of determining the region champion. Individual diving champions would still be determined by each respective region, as opposed to having one “super-regional” champion.

The Board also approved a recommendation from staff to alter the format of the 2020 state swimming & diving championships following feedback from last year’s split-gender finals and 62% approval in a survey of the membership. Provided the Association has full and uninterrupted access to the championship facility on the first day of the meet, staff will work to reschedule the diving competition so that the preliminaries and finals are all contested on the same day.

Since starting its football program in 2018, Sayre High School has played a partial varsity schedule each of the last two years. The Spartans were scheduled to enter district football competition in 2021, however, with the withdrawal of Jenkins from district play for the duration of the current alignment, Sayre petitioned the Association to enter Jenkins’ vacated spot for the 2020 season.

Following discussion, the Board approved Sayre’s request to enter district play in 2020 and directed staff to ascertain scheduling options with a final decision in January to determine how district seeding would be accomplished for 2020.

In other action Tuesday, the Board:

• Denied membership for CornerStone Preparatory School in Madisonville for 2019-20, asking the school to re-apply for 2020-21 while acknowledging that the application came after the start of the school year when it would be difficult to meet all membership criteria.
• Heard a status report on the esports fall season, which included the number of schools that responded in the affirmative to participation through the es101 authorization form for League of Legends (66), Rocket League (55) and SMITE (45).

– KHSAA –

About the Kentucky High School Athletic Association
The Kentucky High School Athletic Association was organized in 1917 and is the agency designated by the Kentucky Department of Education to manage high school athletics in the Commonwealth. The Association is a voluntary nonprofit 501(c)3 organization made up of 280 member schools both public and non-public. The KHSAA awards 215 state championships to 51 teams and 164 individuals in 13 sports and 6 sport-activities, funds catastrophic insurance coverage for its more than 106,000 rostered member school student-athletes, provides coaching education and sports safety programs for more than 12,000 coaches, and licenses and facilitates the distribution of training material for over 4,000 contest officials.