School leaders discussed the changing landscape throughout the state and changes we could see made soon for more competitive equity
School leaders discussed the changing landscape throughout the state and changes we could see made soon for more competitive equity
School leaders discussed the changing landscape throughout the state and changes we could see made soon for more competitive equity
Transferring and open enrollment continue to be topics of discussion when it comes to the growing change in the high school sports landscape throughout the state of Nebraska.
There are pros and cons to both sides, activities directors across the state have seen the impact firsthand on athletics. KETV sat down with a few of those AD’s to discuss the changes they’ve seen over the last few years and some of the potential changes to help fix those issues that we can expect to see implemented soon.
Whether it’s football, basketball, soccer, or any sport in between the change in the high school sports landscape is apparent throughout the state.
“I think there’s a few different factors, one the popularity of club sports, club sports offer all types of great opportunities for kids that maybe we didn’t have 15 or 20 years ago,” Fremont AD Scott Anderson said.
Along with club sports you add the landscape of college athletics in the new world of NIL.
“It’s a little bit of a trickledown effect from colleges. There’s a lot of movement in the colleges now with NIL money and with kids just moving, quitting in the middle of the year. High school kids see that, parents see that,” Bellevue East AD Chad Holtz said. “I don’t know that it’s helped the landscape of high school football it’s probably made that talent gap wider.”
The moving around of student athletes has not just made it hard for schools to compete on the field or on the court but to even field a complete roster.
“Those bottom teams they aren’t thinking about state championships they are thinking about I want to play Friday night; I want to be able to field a team, I want my kids to have a great experience,” Holtz said.
“Everybody wants some sort of solution but I’m not sure that they could get to it right away but the discussion and dialogue that we’re having I think is good,” Lincoln High AD Pat Gatzemeyer said.
READ MORE: Omaha Public Schools discusses the changing landscape in high school athletics, plans for change
Activities directors can all agree that some sort of change is needed. The start of that change begins with football.
“I think once that goes then we’ll move into some different things like basketball and soccer and other things along those lines that will follow suit pretty quickly after,” Anderson said.
there are three different main proposals out there for change as far as the first domino to fall that is football. We can expect those three proposals to be voted on at district meetings on January 15th.
“All have their pros and cons to it. The hope is that when we go back to our next round of district meetings in January that we can agree and at least get one of them through,” Anderson said.
No schedule is ever going to be perfect but the main goal across all districts is the same.
“Whether you lose every game or win every game how close they are in terms of the score sometimes or the effort that’s really what we’re looking at, how can we help in that aspect of it,” Gatzemeyer said.
Competitive equity is the goal across the state. It’s not subject to just one class or one sport, but all kids and sports across the board.
“Looking forward to creating equal opportunity for kids across the state as much as we can level the playing field for everybody, we’d like to do that we know it’s never going to be perfect but as much competitive equity as we can get is the end goal of everyone involved in this process of change,” Anderson said.
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