WIAA approves basketball seeding at final meeting
NFL cancels Hall of Fame game
Wrestling wasn’t the only winner to come out of the final WIAA Board of Control meeting of the year.
The board unanimously supported a plan to add a girls individual wrestling championship for the 2021-22 season Wednesday. The vote makes Wisconsin the 17th state in the country to add a state tournament in that sport.
There were, however, a handful of other key votes made during the threehour meeting. Those decisions included the electronic seeding of basketball tournament series and the permanent implementation of a two-division boys hockey state tournament. There were
also academic relief and financial measures adopted in the wake of the coronavirus-related school closures and economic downturns experienced this spring.
Here is a look.
Basketball seeding: The board unanimously approved a proposal to seed boys and girls tournament series as soon as this upcoming season but no later than 2021-22.
One of the next challenges will be to create a database of scores from past seasons to test the yetto-be created formula. The WIAA also will need to create a database, similar to what it has for football, from which it can pull scores that will be fed into the formula.
Making ends meet: When the spread of the coronavirus forced the cancellation of the boys and girls basketball tournaments, the WIAA wasn’t able to fully reap the benefits of its most profitable state tournaments, events that help subsidize other WIAA state championships.
To help ends meet, the organization received $300,000 in federal stimulus money from the Paycheck Protection Program earlier this year. The program provides loans that turn into grants if the business that receives the funds doesn’t lay off or furlough workers.
Here is what he Board approved Wednesday.
A $1 ticket increase for regional, sectional and state tournaments. Based on sales in a recent year, WIAA executive director Dave Anderson estimated the increase could provide as much as $900,000 in additional revenue, though he cautioned tickets might not sell as well post COVID-19. “We will be lucky if we see a third of that,” he told the board. “That’s speculation on my part, but I don’t know that attendance is going to bounce back as quickly as we all hope.”
There were also four cost-cutting measures.
Decrease member mileage reimbursement for tournament travel by 50 cents for the 2021-22 school year.
Reduce the revenue share for hosting regional and sectional tournaments from 25% to 20% for ’21-22.
Coaches Advisory and Sport Advisory committee meetings will be conducted by video conference in ’21-22.
Reduce the mileage for staff, board and committee members and officials by five cents per mile.
Based on Anderson’s estimates, those measures could save about $338,000.
Academic relief: The board unanimously voted to give schools the option of waiving the WIAA’s eligibility grade requirements until the first grading period of the upcoming school year. The decision comes in response to the challenges some students and communities faced adapting to and accessing virtual education after schools closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
A school still can follow its academic policies, but the vote aimed to offer relief to schools that requested it.
“We have a parallel precedent for this,” Anderson told the board.
“When Hurricane Katrina hit and there was a pretty dramatic influx of new students from Louisiana moving into Wisconsin, and other states quite honestly, that we recognized then as now the most important thing and what is best for kids is to get them connected with schools, get them connected with coaches, get them connected into their sports and activities.”
Boys hockey: After completing the first year of a two-year trial period, the Board voted to permanently split boys hockey into two divisions. The Board also agreed to have the eight coaches whose teams qualify for state seed both divisions of the state tournament.
A proposal that would have split the divisions equally failed. Instead the field will continue to take the smallest 32 enrollments for Division 2.
A rationale for maintaining the current split was to provide smaller programs a greater opportunity to advance deeper into the tournament. That is how it worked out this past season when all four qualifiers made either their first appearance or qualified for the first time in at least a decade.
The NFL on Thursday canceled the Hall of Fame game that traditionally opens the preseason and is delaying the 2020 induction ceremonies for a year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Aug. 6 exhibition game in Canton, Ohio, between the Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers is the first on-field event the league has canceled during the pandemic. It will be played on Aug. 5, 2021, with the same teams.
Enshrinements for 20 men scheduled for this year now will occur on Aug. 7, 2021, with the 2021 inductees going into the Pro Football Hall of Fame the next day.
NFL owners conducted a virtual meeting Thursday in which the preseason schedule was discussed. It’s possible the league will reduce the number of exhibition games to two per team from the usual four.
SOCCER
Australia and New Zealand will co-host the 2023 Women’s World Cup. The island neighbors beat Colombia, 22-13, on Thursday in a vote by the FIFA Council.
The winning bid proposed 12 cities with seven in Australia and five in New Zealand. It includes the main stadium used for the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Liverpool clinches title: The 30-year wait is over. Liverpool is champion of England again.
Liverpool clinched its first league title since 1990 on Thursday, ending an agonizing title drought without the players even having to take the field.
Instead, the Premier League crown was secured when Chelsea beat second-place Manchester City, 2-1, a result that means City can no longer catch Liverpool with seven games remaining.
HORSE RACING
Churchill Downs officials have gotten their wish, announcing Thursday that when the Kentucky Derby is run in September there will be spectators in the stands – just more spread out than usual.
The 146th running of the Oaks for fillies and the Derby had been postponed from May 1-2 to Sept. 4-5 because of the coronavirus pandemic.