TCAL reverses course on hoop schedule

On second thought, the Tri-City Athletic League is not going to be changing up its basketball schedule.

The league’s athletic directors voted earlier this month to create a new basketball schedule that would have had varsity boys and girls teams playing at home on the same night, with the girls at 5:30 and the boys at 7:30 p.m.

On Monday, after some experimenting with the schedules, the league voted via email to revert back to the league’s original schedule.

“I think you really have to weigh a couple of things when you look at it,” said Tokay athletic director Michael Holst. “One is the ability of the girls teams to share a little bit bigger crowd, that’s a major plus to it. But when you look at the lower levels, some of the lower level coaches sit on the bench for the varsity, and with this you can’t really do that. Then there’s the inability to see the lower level games.”

Lodi High’s Robert Winterhalter also liked the idea of bringing in a bigger crowd for the girls games. He said his boys and girls coaches were split on the idea.

“I wanted to try something new,” Winterhalter said. “I wanted to see if we could get the guys and girls playing on the same night and get some additional spectators for the girls team, do some extra senior night things with both teams, so I voted for the new schedule.”

The league voted 4-3 to overturn the new schedule. Winterhalter said the league commissioner was looking into having a different lowerlevel team complement the two varsity games, and schedules started to become unbalanced with home and away games.

“There’s pros and cons,” Holst said. “The dealbreaker for me was the schedule just not being consistent. For parents, it’s important to have consistency of the games being at the same time.”