Seeding for state voted down

VALLEY CITY — There will be no seeding system adopted for the Class B volleyball and basketball tournaments.

The North Dakota High School Activities Association Board of Directors voted down the recommendation from the district chair 7-2 on Tuesday.

An advisory committee had endorsed the seeding system with a 12-4 vote earlier in the month, but the current eight-year cycle of determining the pairings for the three tournaments remains intact.

“I kind of thought they’d be interested in seeding the state tournaments,” NDHSAA Executive Secretary Sherm Sylling said. “Obviously they weren’t, but we are closer. We got some votes.”

The proposal called for the volleyball and boys and girls basketball tournaments to be seeded by the following method:

n The head coaches of the qualifying teams would electronically rank the seven other teams in the tournament 1-7.

n The high and low rakings would be thrown out and the five remaining scores would be averaged.

n The four lowest averages are ranked 1-4 and the remaining four teams are randomly drawn. Ties would be settled by pulling the votes of the other tied teams’ coaches and then recalculated from the remaining votes.

Two of the four district chair recommendations discussed were approved.

The creation of a 14-foot coaching box for basketball that can be adjusted to fit different gyms in the state was approved 8-1.

The recommendation to make the shot clocks for boys and girls basketball uniform at 35 seconds was passed 5-4.

The other recommendation that failed was switching the starts of the boys and girls Class B basketball seasons. The proposal to start the boys basketball season before the girls was voted down 8-1.

Other items of note:

n The Board passed an athletic review recommendation 9-0 to change the points structure for region games boys and girls hockey. Three points will now be awarded for a regulation win, two points for an overtime or shootout win and one point for an overtime or shootout loss.

n A change for determining tiebreakers for region standings in boys and girls hockey was approved 9-0.

n The utilization of video replay at the state hockey tournament was voted down 9-0.

n The Board voted 9-0 in favor of counting all medical forfeits and defaults in the individual region tournament toward seeding criteria.

Mix is a writer for The

Forum of Fargo-Moorhead

Tags: high school, sports