NIAA to make small changes in rubric for Division I-A next year

The Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association met on June 18 for their summer meeting. Of note, the association decided on a compressed spring schedule for next year. The board met and approved a new spring schedule to take the state championships out of the Memorial Day weekend schedule. Memorial Day interfered this year with the title matches falling on May 23 weekend.

According to the board, this had some schools scrambling for hotel rooms at an increased cost.

The change means teams in the spring can expect more frequency in the games and the state title matches will be one week earlier.

Chris Brockman, the Pahrump Valley High School athletic ddministrator, said last week that the new Nye County School District schedule also conflicted with the NIAA athletic schedule for graduation and now with this change, graduation probably would not need to be changed. School is out for Nye County next year on May 22.

Another change the board made was in the rubric points, which governs whether or not a Division I-A teams moves up to Division I or stays in Division I-A. Teams scoring more than 150 points could move to Division I. Teams in Division I scoring fewer than 30 points could move to I-A.

A change in how teams were scored was also made. Last year teams received double points for football and now football would be treated like all tier I schools. Nelson had said this will mean teams will not accumulate points too fast.

Pahrump scored 60 total points last year.

Again, Spring Valley and Sierra Vista will be joining the Sunset League and Del Sol will be in the Sunrise League, starting in the fall 2014 season.

Rancho High School last year scored just 19 points, but because they were in the same division as Del Sol High School who scored 0 points, Del Sol moved to the I-A and Rancho stayed in Division I. Rancho instead was granted independent status in football only, so that they can regroup. According to the NIAA, opponents have outscored Rancho 1004 points to 82 points. Another factor in granting the status to Rancho was the amount of injuries. The team reported 43 main injuries in the last three years which included 27 concussions.