Changes to player individual playing limit rule?

[EdgyTim]

This was sent out recently to AD's.

Dear Athletic Director,


As you likely know, the IHSA’s Board of Directors approved a policy last June related to individual playing limits in football.


The policy was initiated by the IHSA’s Sports Medicine Advisory Committee (SMAC).


After hearing feedback from many of you, your football coaches, and the Football Advisory Committee, the SMAC recently proposed amended language to this policy.


Last Saturday, at its regularly-scheduled March meeting, the IHSA Board of Directors considered the SMAC’s amended language and approved the following policy that will be in effect starting in the 2019 football season this fall.

• A player shall not play in more than two games in any one week and shall not play in more than one game on a single day.
• A week is defined as a seven-day period running from Friday through the following Thursday.
• The SMAC recommends that if a player plays in two games in a week, one of those games is only as a one-way player. This is a recommendation; not a requirement.
• Players cannot play in games on consecutive days or be involved in live contact or Thud in practice the day before or after playing in a game.
• Thud is defined as: Competitive tempo with no pre-determined winner, and the players are not tackling to the ground.
• See more information regarding USA Football definitions in the IHSA Handbook (by-law 3.157 on page 65).
• If a player participates in one play in a game, that counts as playing in a game.
• Exception: If a player participates in only one play in a game due to a teammate’s equipment failure or injury, that participation doesn’t count as a game played.
• Exception: Players who only participate as a kicker, punter, or holder are allowed to participate in two games on the same day.
• Note: If a game is stopped due to weather or other circumstances, players are allowed to participate in the game if it resumes the next day.

This is allowed because the level of football exposure the night before didn’t equal a complete game.


FAQs


Q: Can a player participate in a Varsity game on Friday and a JV game on Monday?

A: Yes


Q: Can a player participate in a Varsity game on Friday and a Sophomore game on Saturday?

A: No


Q: Can a player participate in a Freshman game on Thursday and Varsity game on Friday?

A: No


Q: Can a player participate in a JV game on Monday and a Freshman game on Thursday?

A: Yes


Q: Can a Freshman kicker participate in a Freshman A and Freshman B game on the same day?

A: Yes, as long as his only participation is as a kicker.


Q: Can a player participate in a preliminary game on Friday night and also participate in the Varsity game on the same night?

A: No


Q: If a Friday night Varsity game is delayed due to lightning and is completed on Saturday, are the Varsity players allowed to participate in the resumed portion of the game on Saturday?

A: Yes. The SMAC sees this as participation in one game that is spread out over two days.


Q: If a player participates in a JV game on Monday, is he allowed to wear full pads to practice on Tuesday?

A: Yes. He can participate in practice on Tuesday; just not live contact or Thud drills. See the definition of Thud and other USA Football terms in the IHSA Handbook (by-law 3.157 on page 65).


Q: Can a non-Varsity team participate in a Jamboree where it plays against more than one opponent on the same day?

A: Yes. Teams can participate in a Jamboree, as long as the total playing time does not exceed the length of a normal game.


For example: In a Jamboree setting, a non-Varsity team can play a half of football against one opponent and another half of football against a different opponent on the same day.

Or, a non-Varsity team can play four separate quarters against four different teams on the same day, as long as the total playing time doesn’t exceed the length of a normal game.

 

[No Bias---Just Reality]

This fixes almost nothing as the most common use in 2 games would be sophomore and varsity which will either both be Friday or one Friday one Saturday. Both scenarios are not legal. And there is an exemption for the kicker and holder but not long snapper.

 

[godfthr53]

When I first saw this a week or so ago I said to myself when did IHSA allow Jamborees?

 

[Kevin JCHS 81]

When I first saw this a week or so ago I said to myself when did IHSA allow Jamborees?

Joliet used to do this before my high school years (at least prior to 1977) with Joliet Central, East, West and Catholic. It was almost certainly before the football playoff began (so prior to 1974). I can't remember what is was called.

Was the IHSA even involved in football prior to the state playoffs?

 

[EdgyTim]

One of my thoughts is this the beginning of the end of Friday night sophomore football?

 

[No Bias---Just Reality]

One of my thoughts is this the beginning of the end of Friday night sophomore football?

It doesn’t matter if they play on Saturday either as this rule states you can’t play 2 games the same day OR on consecutive days. So unless they move Sophomore games to Monday or some other odd day they may as well leave it on Friday.

 

[PanthersWildcats86]

One of my thoughts is this the beginning of the end of Friday night sophomore football?

For the schools that play freshman/soph/varsity, with a largely combined fresh-soph squad, I foresee exactly that: freshmen will play the warm-up game on Friday, the sophs will play Monday. In this way the freshmen can still play soph, and the better sophs can still play varsity. The disappointing thing is that not all kids will then get to dress on Friday night...or we will see teams with the entire soph squad dressing varsity whether or not they take the field. But by doing this live contact / thud practice is limited to Wed...

This idea does not affect the all-stater who plays both ways, every play, including special teams. Realistically, that player who never comes off the field should be the concern...

And I just don't get the jamboree comments, which likely proposes the best answer...instead of defining playing time per the game, they should be defining it by quarters - 4 quarters max in consecutive days, max two games per week...

 

[tomloner]

So if we stay with District Football, games will be even more lopsided when mismatches occur. I’ve seen a lot of games where the starters from the sophomore team suit for varsity games when playing a weaker opponent. Once the varsity game gets out of hand the sophomores play most of the second half against the other team’s varsity starters. If the JV/sophomore teams match up the same as the varsity teams the sophomore starters can play the 1st half of their game and 2nd half of the varsity game.

The larger CCL/ESCC teams for the most part play a full freshmen, sophomore, and varsity schedule. Most CPS only field a JV and varsity teams and not always both. So if District Football goes forward strong conferences will still stay intact to play lower level games.

I thought the IHSA was in the business of promoting football not trying to kill it off.

 

[atrain97]

One of my thoughts is this the beginning of the end of Friday night sophomore football?

Yep, I heard from a reliable source that FVC friday nights will be Varsity only. no soph, no fresh on fridays.

 

[Undercenter3rd1]

For the schools that play freshman/soph/varsity, with a largely combined fresh-soph squad, I foresee exactly that: freshmen will play the warm-up game on Friday, the sophs will play Monday. In this way the freshmen can still play soph, and the better sophs can still play varsity. The disappointing thing is that not all kids will then get to dress on Friday night...or we will see teams with the entire soph squad dressing varsity whether or not they take the field. But by doing this live contact / thud practice is limited to Wed...

This idea does not affect the all-stater who plays both ways, every play, including special teams. Realistically, that player who never comes off the field should be the concern...

And I just don't get the jamboree comments, which likely proposes the best answer...instead of defining playing time per the game, they should be defining it by quarters - 4 quarters max in consecutive days, max two games per week...

Sophomore football is almost done!All schools will go to JV A or JV B depending on size of squads.JV A will basically be sophs and play on Friday before Varsity.JV B will play on sat or mon not sure on that.Smaller schools with one JV team probly play on mon!

 

[PanthersWildcats86]

Sophomore football is almost done!All schools will go to JV A or JV B depending on size of squads.JV A will basically be sophs and play on Friday before Varsity.JV B will play on sat or mon not sure on that.Smaller schools with one JV team probly play on mon!

At some point, this is just another version of the system...Renaming the soph team as "JV A" and the frosh as "JV B" doesn't change much. Now, if JV A is the good sophs and varsity non-starters, and JV B is the freshmen and soph backups, might make some difference...But I think that at the usual 3A/4A level, with probably 15-20 kids per grade playing, a JV A squad with sophs & varsity non-starters will just serve to wreck practice for the Varsity...and schools at that size likely have the opinion that the only game that really matters is the Varsity one (which is why they really don't care if the sophs start 5-0 and finish 5-4 when Varsity pulls up all the best players up full-time...)The only contact practice can be on Wednesday for the kids playing Friday and Monday...The question might be answered differently at Lincoln Way East, with 100 frosh, 100 soph, and 100+ jr/sr on varsity...For 1A schools, it might force them to play varsity only on Friday and fresh-soph on Monday, with everyone dressing for the Varsity game...

The smaller the community, the more likely Friday night football is the community focus. The youth league kids are there, the band, the cheerleaders, every community group wants the fundraising opportunity...The politicians are glad-handing...I don't see the prelim game going away at the lower levels, even if it becomes the frosh game, except at the schools where everyone might dress varsity...

 

[Undercenter3rd1]

Just talking with people from different areas looks like the small schools will have JV and varsity.Medium size schools will have freshman,jv and varsity.Then it looks like larger schools will have freshman, 2 jv teams and varsity.Last yr some schools sent sophmore teams to play JV teams.

 

[Zebra]

One of my thoughts is this the beginning of the end of Friday night sophomore football?

I understand schools are looking hard at moving sophomore games from a Friday night prelim to the varsity game to being played on Mondays. Has significant ramifications on assignment of officials in those conferences that hire the same 5-man crew to work both games on Friday nights and usually have less than 5 officials (4, 3 or even 2 in some conferences) working freshman games. If they play a freshman game as the Friday prelim, will they pay for 5 officials to work it? Will they be able to find and pay 5-man crews on Monday afternoons to work the relocated Sophomore games, or will they have to go with 3- or 4-man crews?

 

[LakeCtyNewt]

Where this causes a huge issue is in terms of competitive balance. We often see on Friday nights where we get games between on team that is very good and one that isn't. Coaches use those opportunities to get second and third teamers and even 4th stringers into the game. One to get them playing time and two to keep the score from getting to triple digits.

This rule will make it near impossible for a coach to freely substitute. Its unfortunate that so little thought went into this whole process.

How many kids are playing 3-4 quarters on Friday then coming back and playing 2-3 on Saturday. I would guess less than 1%. Just a case of making a rule for rules sake with little or no foresight. Good luck enforcing it too. That wont happen either.

 

[GhostOfTheGhhost]

So this kills football in CPS? The overwhelming majority of CPS teams have freshmen and sophomores playing in all or part of 2 games per week. If all the freshmen and sophomores can only play in one game, this eliminates lower level football for the majority of teams. Eventually, the lack of lower level football for gaining experience will end football in CPS for all but a few teams. Granted, a lot of people don't care about CPS, but this just takes off the field benefits of football away from a whole bunch of kids.

 

[superac777]

When I first saw this a week or so ago I said to myself when did IHSA allow Jamborees?

Bremen,Oak Forest,Hillcrest & Tinley Park I believe did them in the 70's for awhile.I remember the O'Ramas in Indiana

 

[dieter]

I would hope they would schedule Sophs on Monday night instead of Monday afternoon so they have a better chance at getting a 5 man officiating crew.

 

[woody6]

The conversation should include the academic ramifications of additional weekday contests on the student-athletes and teacher-coaches. In general, varsity and sophs on Friday with freshman on Saturday (no practice Mondays for 9th grade) should be the rule.
Any moves by the IHSA, individual conferences and/or host schools to cram more contests into the Monday-Thursday time periods is mis-guided. For example, what the deal with long track/field sectionals becoming more frequent on Thursdays? These lengthy events, often far from home, should be held on Fridays with Saturday as the rain date.
Another head-scratcher is the 2-day conference badminton tournaments. Some leagues hold these long competitions on Wednesdays and Thursdays instead of the more academically sound Friday and Saturday dates.
Across the spectrum, Fridays and Saturdays should be maximized for time-consuming and draining athletic contests with a limit of only 2 events scheduled during the Monday-Thursday part of the week.

 

[mc140]

. For example, what the deal with long track/field sectionals becoming more frequent on Thursdays?

Bloom is on Wednesday this year. Wednesday and Thursday Sectionals are used primarily to avoid proms.

 

[woody6]

Bloom is on Wednesday this year. Wednesday and Thursday Sectionals are used primarily to avoid proms.

Proms can be held on Saturdays to avoid this conflict. I have seen this convention adopted. Saturdays are also less disruptive to the academic week, not to mention eliminating one more weekend day/night for the post-prom outing excesses in play these days.

 

[mc140]

Proms can be held on Saturdays to avoid this conflict. I have seen this convention adopted. Saturdays are also less disruptive to the academic week, not to mention eliminating one more weekend day/night for the post-prom outing excesses in play these days.

Well you can't hold every prom on Saturday. Schools that at least pretend to care about athletics hold their prom in late April/ First week of May. Others like to hold it over the Seniors then make it on a Friday in which some athletes have to chose between their sport and an overrated dance.

 

[ref2]

I would think if the soph game gets moved to Monday it will have a start time of 5:00-6:00. Gives more officials the chance to get there on time. Fresh will stay Thursday with some still Saturday 9:00 am

Just my 2 cents

 

[boileref89]

At least in our conference we play FR games Friday night before the Varsity games. Works well. JV games on Saturday, but I am guessing that will change since this idiotic rule makes that impossible. Kids who were not starters but got some reps on Friday night mainly on special teams now have two options. Don’t play on Friday for even 1 play so you can play on Saturday, or play normal limited reps on Friday with no play on Saturday. Did the IHSA ever consider that limiting the ability to use Saturday for games was a bad thing? These kids have enough going on during the week, Saturday should be able to be used. What the rule should do is set limits on the number of plays a player can play in over a 2 or 3 day period (kind of like pitcher counts for baseball). Coaches would be happy I think to figure out a way to comply with this.

 

[PH23]

Is it just me, or do others find it very hypocritical that if a game is called due to weather, and resumes the following day all players are eligible to play, but if a kid runs down the field 4x on the kick off team on Friday night he can not play in a JV game on Saturday. So essesntially the IHSA is saying player safety matters unless, it might cause scheduling issues due to the weather, then player safety isn't too important.

 

[PanthersWildcats86]

The conversation should include the academic ramifications of additional weekday contests on the student-athletes and teacher-coaches. In general, varsity and sophs on Friday with freshman on Saturday (no practice Mondays for 9th grade) should be the rule.

This is one area where the small town programs that work together from little kids to high school get right...The high school owns Friday, the youth program owns Saturday. The Dynomites, or SuperLights, or whatever they call the 6-8 year old team plays at 9 am., then games at 10:30, 12:30, and 2:30...Freshmen practice, soph & varsity film review / walk through / whatever they do in the morning...The high school kids can then go watch their little brothers play and sisters cheer. The parents are free then to coach the youth league, run the youth league concession stand, and do whatever volunteer work is necessary keep the youth program running. These folks don't want a Saturday high school game...As the kids get older, the youth league is replaced by watching the older sibling's college game...The community is building the program from the grassroots..

Trading the Monday Frosh game for soph game means that two classes of high school kids have parents who might have to choose between watching the Frosh-Soph game and coaching their younger sibling's practice...By the time high school hits the playoffs and playing Saturday, the youth league is winding down...

I played hoops at a 250 kid school. The concept of academic ramifications of weekday games although relevant is ironic to me...We only had 2 hoops coaches, the Varsity and the JV (which properly should have been referred to as the Freshman-Sophomore coach). Fresh-soph was a combined team that did everything together. We regularly would have weeks where we had either a Fr A-B or Fr/JV game night on Monday, V-Soph on Tuesday, practice Wed, Fr A-B or Fr/JV game Thurs, V-Soph Fri, Fr A-B or Fr/JV game on Sat. morning...We truly had weeks where we had 5 games and only one practice...

When spring breaks out, that same small school couldn't support baseball/softball and track without a significant crossover of kids playing both. So the conference ADs generally scheduled baseball/softball M-W-F and track Tu-Th..So there were weeks where kids had games/meets 5 nights a week, with either a doubleheader or track invitational on Saturday, and those double sport kids never practiced (often they took batting practice in the cage during PE)...

 

[PowerI66]

The conversation should include the academic ramifications of additional weekday contests on the student-athletes and teacher-coaches. In general, varsity and sophs on Friday with freshman on Saturday (no practice Mondays for 9th grade) should be the rule.
Any moves by the IHSA, individual conferences and/or host schools to cram more contests into the Monday-Thursday time periods is mis-guided. For example, what the deal with long track/field sectionals becoming more frequent on Thursdays? These lengthy events, often far from home, should be held on Fridays with Saturday as the rain date.
Another head-scratcher is the 2-day conference badminton tournaments. Some leagues hold these long competitions on Wednesdays and Thursdays instead of the more academically sound Friday and Saturday dates.
Across the spectrum, Fridays and Saturdays should be maximized for time-consuming and draining athletic contests with a limit of only 2 events scheduled during the Monday-Thursday part of the week.

I don't see any issues with weekday games. Basically every other sport has games/meets/matches on weekdays.

 

[woody6]

I don't see any issues with weekday games. Basically every other sport has games/meets/matches on weekdays.

I just continue to believe that across-the-board in all sports, boys and girls, it is unfair to saddle these student-athletes (and teacher-coaches) with multiple hours cut out of their important Mon-Thur weeknights due to the demands of contests more than twice during that time period. And for those coaches who are part of this over-scheduling, shame on you for choosing to "just roll the ball out" to engage in contests instead of taking the time and effort to plan practices to improve weaknesses of the team or individuals. Administrators, academic or otherwise, who turn a blind eye to some of this excessive weekday scheduling owe the student-athletes and parents more oversight.

 

[PowerI66]

I just continue to believe that across-the-board in all sports, boys and girls, it is unfair to saddle these student-athletes (and teacher-coaches) with multiple hours cut out of their important Mon-Thur weeknights due to the demands of contests more than twice during that time period. And for those coaches who are part of this over-scheduling, shame on you for choosing to "just roll the ball out" to engage in contests instead of taking the time and effort to plan practices to improve weaknesses of the team or individuals. Administrators, academic or otherwise, who turn a blind eye to some of this excessive weekday scheduling owe the student-athletes and parents more oversight.

Who is holding the gun to their head? These are extracurricular activities.

 

[PanthersWildcats86]

I just continue to believe that across-the-board in all sports, boys and girls, it is unfair to saddle these student-athletes (and teacher-coaches) with multiple hours cut out of their important Mon-Thur weeknights due to the demands of contests more than twice during that time period. And for those coaches who are part of this over-scheduling, shame on you for choosing to "just roll the ball out" to engage in contests instead of taking the time and effort to plan practices to improve weaknesses of the team or individuals. Administrators, academic or otherwise, who turn a blind eye to some of this excessive weekday scheduling owe the student-athletes and parents more oversight.

Strangely enough, most of the athletes playing the multiple nights per week were in the top third of their class. Since it was a small school, the college prep kids often sat next to what now would be IEP kids in required classes. Freshman health, for example, was a class taught to the lowest common denominator. The teacher would have us do a study sheet (handwritten), and the next day the test would literally be the study sheet cut apart and recopied with the questions in a different order. The two future attorneys in the class averaged completing the tests in 15 seconds, while there was a student who had already failed the course twice who could take the whole hour. Extra credit was readily handed out, to the point that several students had A's before taking the final (and the two future attorneys ended up with like 124% as their final grades). But we took all the higher math & science courses to try and make up for it...They sent us on short bus trips to places like Paxton (65 miles down I-57) the night before finals...

And athletic schedules like that sure prepare kids for college. I watched kids who did nothing but study in high school AP classes at giant suburban schools with straight A averages crash & burn first semester because they had no idea of how to budget time. If you played five games every week, and still were in the top 10 of your class, you probably learned time management pretty early on in high school...

 

[go dogz]

Sophomore football is almost done!All schools will go to JV A or JV B depending on size of squads.JV A will basically be sophs and play on Friday before Varsity.JV B will play on sat or mon not sure on that.Smaller schools with one JV team probly play on mon!

honestly that is the way it should be (varsity).
so, you will have frosh, sophs, jr/sr on either jv(a) or jv(b) or you made the varsity team.