News-Record.com

As expected at its annual Board of Directors meeting last week, the NCHSAA approved lacrosse as its first new sanctioned sport since fast-pitch softball in 1994. Here's the release from the association, which includes several other developments we'll follow up on this week:

CHAPEL HILL ­ The North Carolina High School Athletic Association Board of Directors ended its three-day winter meeting on Wednesday at the Simon F. Terrell Building in Chapel Hill.
The Board received nine recommendations from the Athletic Safety Task Force developed by the NCHSAA Sports Medicine Committee.
President Bill Harrison, superintendent of Cumberland County schools, noted that the Board supported, in concept, the recommendations made by the Athletic Safety Task Force, but there are a number of stakeholders. He noted it would be prudent for the NCHSAA to take the lead in bringing representatives from the State Board of Education, State Department of Public Instruction, Association of School Administrators, and the North Carolina School Board Association, as well as members of the General Assembly, to begin to develop an additional course of action. Charlie Adams, executive director, will help facilitate that initial meeting.
Staff will develop a document that highlights exactly where the NCHSAA is currently with each of those nine recommendations, since some are already in place. No additional voting occurred, and NCHSAA legal counsel will also review a couple of the items that have not yet been enacted.
Among the action items which were approved by the board
included:
--sanctioning both men¹s lacrosse and women¹s lacrosse as an NCHSAA championship sport starting with the academic year 2009-10.
Details about number of games, sports seasons and playoff qualification will be worked out and approved prior to the start of school in 2009
--changed the start of basketball for the 2009-2010 academic year, delaying the start by a week; the first practice may be November 9, first contest November 16; in two different weeks of the season, a school would be able to play four games in a week if the fourth is on a non-school day
--authorized NCHSAA staff to look at the option of using a 24-team bracket in 1-A dual team tennis, if needed
--approved a change that high school tennis teams may play four matches in a single week if the fourth is on a non-school day, starting with the spring season of 2009
--require STAR Sportsmanship program to be completed by any student-athlete, coach or administrator who is ejected or disqualified from a contest before he or she returns to play, starting with the 2009-10 academic year
--reviewed current policy on fighting; change policy to ³a team whose players or coaches accumulate three individual ejections for fighting (note: if a situation occurs where four players on one team are ejected during one fighting incident, then those four individual ejections will cause the team to lose its playoff privileges)²
--approved action budget for 2008-09 since the audit has been completed, but investment revenues are down substantially
--raised the ticket prices for regional basketball tournament from eight to nine dollars, effective with the 2010 tournament

An appeal from Greenville¹s J.H. Rose High School to change its conference placement in the upcoming realignment, which had been previously approved by the Board last May to start in 2009, was denied by the Board.