New IHSA rules

[tornado]

IHSA just passed a few new rules...most notably...

-that for the first time private schools can co-op - meaning smaller schools that can't field teams because of low enrollment numbers or too few participants can now co-op and combine with another school - but there are restrictions...
It can only be done by private schools with enrollment of 200 or less.

-requires the athlete to be passing 5 courses (25 hours) instead of just 4 to be eligible

-the limits on how many quarters an athlete can play in basketball during the season are eliminated - previously the athletes were limited to 110 quarters - not counting post-season play. This previously prevented some players from being able to play on both the JV and varsity...

-school physicals are now valid for 395 days (a year and one month) instead of the old rule of just 365 days...
This solved the problems that came during spring sports where kids often get their physicals early in summer after school ends, but if the following year their spring sport plays well into June because of going to state - they might reach the limit of their 365-day school physical before their run at state ends - thus possibly making some players ineligible right at about championship time

[FlyingSpaghettiMonster]

Those all seem reasonable. Something must be wrong...

[tornado]

I agree FSM - but honestly - the non-co-op rule against private schools was always unreasonable but.... was held onto mainly because some people felt that if it were allowable - then a couple of the bigger private schools - say Peoria Notre Dame plus Bloomington Catholic or Joliet Catholic -- could get together and co-op and become an unfairly engineered & solidly unbeatable mega-power school --
that they feared the private schools would jack the system to use the rule to win more state titles...so anything that might help a private school wasn't going to be allowed.

Note they still don't want the bigger private schools doing it...and yet there really aren't that many privates under 200 simply because small private schools are hard to make operate because of costs...
Peoria NOtre Dame, BCC, Peoria Christian, St. Bede, Springfield Sacred Heart-Griffin, Joliet Catholic, Quincy Notre Dame, Rock Island Alleman, Rockford Boylan, Rockford Christian, Rockford Lutheran, and just about any other private you can think of around here are all above 200 so would STILL not be able to co-op.

In fact, of the over 750 IHSA schools only about a dozen are privates under 200 enrollment and most aren't anywhere close enough to another one to find one to co-op with ...so the rule change is pretty much all for show.......

Where the rule could possibly do some good is- say - if Peoria Christian wanted to try to start up football - they probably wouldn't have enough kids and costs would be enormous - but if they were allowed to co-op with Notre Dame, then the few PCS kids who might want to play football could try out for the PND team and it would help both schools while not creating anything like a powerhouse for other schools to fear.

It's no different than if a Lowpoint kid wanted to play soccer and his school didn't have a team - he could co-op with Roanoke-Eureka and they do have a soccer team and everyone wins - so why bar the privates from the same opportunity?