When will the members of the Division III Management Council's playing and practice seasons subcommittee realize they are making a mistake with their current proposal (calling for a total playing season length of 19 weeks)? The reason sports are all over the place with regard to Bylaw 17 is because every sport is different.

It may make sense to provide for two scrimmages in basketball or baseball since a swim coach or golf coach can assess where an athlete is at any time in practice. While the subcommittee may feel like it has made sense of the rule, the proposal actually restricts the opportunities a coach has to interact with his or her athletes.

It takes swimming a week to determine what athletes will be selected for the NCAAs. The NCAA takes one athlete for every 7.5 who participate in swimming. So right off the bat, about six of every seven athletes automatically do not qualify for nationals. How many of those would continue to practice after they knew they had swum in their last meet? These athletes lose a week of practice opportunities because the committee begins counting back from when athletes are informed they will attend, not when they had the last chance to qualify. So for most, 19 weeks just became 18 weeks.

This proposal also might make sense if not only the sports were the same, but the schools were as well. Allowing the first meet 15 weeks before the selection date puts it at November 15. That's right during exams for many schools that are on the quarter system. So instead of having three or four meets before winter break, schools on the quarter system might get one or two. Establishing a set start date for meets would not be that big a deal if, when doing the counting, the subcommittee realized that most teams don't practice for two weeks around Christmas and add that break into the weekly count.

Now let's go to the last part of the problem -- 25 preseason practices. It would be one thing to say that we have 25 days of practice before our first meet, but 25 practices are unacceptable. Twenty-five practices either forces swim teams to practice once a day five days a week for five weeks or reduce the number of weeks before the first meet they begin in correlation to the number of morning practices a coach wants to run.

Let's stop trying to make all sports equal and just face the fact that they aren't. If the Council really wants to shorten the season, then just take away a week or two out of the playing season. Don't mess with the other components because it just doesn't work. There is no need to make everything look the same just for the sake of sameness.

Brian Peticolas
Head Swimming and Diving Coach
Head Golf Coach
Principia College

Rule limits practice

As the golf coach at Shepherd College for more than five seasons, one of the things I liked about the sport was that the 24 playing dates, unlike for other sports, could be spread easily over both semesters and not affect the student-athlete's academics (missed classes) as much.

The new legislation in Division II stifles that ability to an extent by limiting practice time. I will be playing half of my season still this fall. This will be 12 dates. With the new legislation, the NCAA has stated that we now can only practice and hold match qualifying on the 12 remaining dates. This runs counter to my concern with splitting the seasons so as not to miss too much class time for playing dates, but also stating that only 12 practices are needed to qualify and work on special parts of the game. Would any basketball coach settle for such an arrangement in the fall? I doubt it.

I hope that the legislative powers that be reconsider this issue.

Mike Jacobs
Head Golf Coach
Shepherd College

Editor's note: For more information on this issue, see the October 22, 2001, issue of The NCAA News.