Reading about the wide world of prep sports on the Web and found this column by Paul Valencia of the Vancouver (Wash.) Columbian regarding athletic codes.
Specifically, Valencia argues that schools in the same league should get together and hammer out a drug and alcohol policy that is consistent for all the schools in the league.
Right now, each school district sets its own policy. So a student-athlete at Richland who gets caught at a party might get X number of games of suspension (let’s say 10 for the sake of argument), but if that student-athlete attended Walla Walla, it’d be Y games (let’s say 5), while if they attended Wenatchee, it’s be Z games (let’s say a season-long ban).
I gotta admit, I’d never thought of this idea, but I wholeheartedly agree with Paul. In the absence of a WIAA rule outlining specific penalties -- and I’m not sure I’d like a one-size-fits-all policy coming down from the top -- it makes perfect sense for teams that compete against each other on the fields or courts of competition in league play to come to a consensus regarding the penalties for athletic code violations so everyone is on an equal playing field with regards to punishing violators.
As always, your comments on the subject are welcome ... as are the comments on my previous blog regarding protecting young arms.
Already, I’ve received a couple of e-mails on that subject.
Jon from Bellevue writes in: While I can understand the reasoning and research behind the pitch count issue, where do you draw the line? Doesn’t every sport carry a certain level of risk for injury? Do we start tracking rebounds to prevent ACL blowouts?
Yes, Jon, it is true that injury is an inherent risk in any sport. But there are certain risks that are greater than others, and steps are taken to reduce those risks -- wearing a helmet in football, for instance, to reduce the risk of concussions. A helmet doesn’t guarantee you won’t get a concussion, but reduces the risk. Same with pitch counts and sore arms.
Here’s Michael from Kennewick: I have coached youth baseball for Kennewick American for about 6 years. When we got lights we went to 3 games a week, which was very tough on pitching. The 3 best pitchers often pitched 2 innings 3 times a week, and this led to a lot of sore arms. I found pitchers did better if they pitched more once a week. The rest seems to be very important. When I pitched in Little League 43 years ago, almost all pitchers pitched 6 innings once a week and sore arms were rare. At KA we have an informal pitch count of about 60 we monitor but many pitchers can get close to that in 2-3 innings. I have had kids go into the 90’s without problems and feel great a week later as long as they get their rest.
Good point, Michael. The key is rest. When Little League imposed its pitch count rule, it had graduated steps -- for 12-year-olds, for instance, 1-20 pitches in a game result in no mandatory rest; 21-40 equals a day of rest; 41-60 is two days of rest and a game must intervene; and 61-85 equals three days of rest and a game must intervene.
The reason I have come around to liking pitch counts over innings is because no two innings are alike. A pitcher can breeze through a 5-pitch inning or labor through a 35-pitch inning, and they count the same. But again, I also understand that from an administrative standpoint, tracking innings is much easier than tracking pitch counts -- unless you’re talking about Little League, where everything is pretty centralized at the league level.
Finally, I got this letter from Deborah in Kennewick: What’s this about Pasco NOT hosting state 3A/4A track starting next year? How did we miss this? What’s the deal?
Deborah, the move of Star Track (the 4A/3A state track championships) back to the westside has been in the works for some time. Once Mount Tahoma opened its facility a couple years ago and showed it could host a state meet (the 2A/1A was held there last year and will be again this year), it pretty much was a fait accompli.
From a logistical and financial standpoint, it just makes more sense to have five or six state qualifiers from the eastside (the combined totals of the 4A and 3A the next two years) per event to head to Tacoma than to have 26 or 27 per event travel from the westside to Pasco.
Til next time ...