Let school principals make the decision

Take a little political pressure, some financial stress and a desire to send a message and what do you get? A well-intentioned but misguided decision that ends up hurting the very population everyone claims they are serving.

No one is more interested in saving money these days than high school principals. They are the ones, after all, who know by name and story the faces of those numbers on spreadsheets about which legislators can only theorize.

Still, they are being asked to find ways to cut costs while acknowledging that education has never been more complicated.

So it is no surprise that they want to save money when it comes to extracurricular activities. It is no secret that they have been under increasing pressure to reduce the amount of time students miss classes for those activities and athletics. Lately, the Utah High School Activities Association's Executive Committee has even endured threats from school boards that actually forced some contest reductions in the state's smaller classifications.

Last month, the UHSAA's Executive Committee voted to hold the first round of the 4A and 5A girls and boys state basketball tournaments at home sites. This would, they reasoned, save money and keep students in class as the games would be played at night instead of all day long.

On the surface, it appears to deal with both issues and really not impact playoff opportunities. That's the trouble with superficial decisions. Like icebergs, they don't consider the damage that can be done by that which we cannot see at first glance.

Consider some of the deeper issues in this case.

First, one of the difficulties I have is that in high school competition, all regions are not created equal. Sometimes they aren't even comparable, but in Utah, how a team finishes in region play determines seeding for state tournaments.

I've covered volleyball tournaments where entire regions were out of the tournament after the first round. This year in boys basketball, Region 9 was eliminated in the first round of play.

Under the new rules, however, Region 9's top seed, which this year was Snow Canyon, would host Springville, Region 7's fifth seed. With both teams traveling to West Valley's E Center this year, the Red Devils upset Snow Canyon.