After months of speculation, the Delaware Interscholastic Athletic Association made schedule cuts for the 2009-10 and 2010-11 school years official at its May 14 meeting.
Facing Delaware’s $800 million budget deficit, the DIAA had been exploring creative solutions to help its 40 member schools cut back on spending, eventually settling on what came out to an approximately 10 percent schedule cut.
The schedule will trim the 22-game basketball season down to 20 games, the 20-game baseball season down to 18 games, and all 16-game seasons down just one contest to 15.
The football season, which stands at 10 games, will remain unaffected by the cut, as it was decided cutting a football game would mean losing the large revenues the contests bring in.
“Nobody wants to cut football,” said Milford School District Athletic Director Glen Stevenson. “Not just because they like it but football is, for many downstate schools a money-making operation, and these cuts are supposed to help your budget.”
Stevenson said he knew the measure was up for consideration by DIAA, but was surprised when it passed.
“To be honest, I didn’t think it was going to happen,” he said. “But overall, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing — some of the seasons are a little long. Basketball, at 22 games, it can be hard to get some of those games in.”
The main point debated at the May 14 meeting, and at meetings before that, was that the playing field needed to be leveled for all member schools.
And with some schools’ athletic departments facing more severe cuts than others, 10 percent was agreed upon as fair.
“Overall, I don’t think it’s going to have much impact on who wins or loses a given championship, because our conference schedules are going to stay intact,” Stevenson said. “And the truth is, it will save us a pretty sizable amount of money. If it’s a home game, you don’t have to pay for officials, and if it’s an away game, you don’t have to pay for transportation.”
Mike Wagner, a DIAA board member who sat on the committee that researched the cuts, and is also the athletic director at Lake Forest High School, said he fully agreed the cuts leveled the playing field.
With some schools facing rougher situations than others, Wagner said there was a need for uniformity when deciding on how the schedule cuts would be made.
He added that while 10 percent might sound like a lot, he does not see it that way and said the effects should hardly even be noticed. In turn, Wagner said he does not expect to hear too many complaints from coaches or parents.
“I think the fact of the matter is that these aren’t major cuts,” he said. “I don’t think any reasonable coach would see that as unreasonable.”
Wagner added that the schedule cuts are not permanent, and the full schedules will be returned when the budget crisis ends.
The cuts come after a spring season that might have benefited from having fewer games on the schedule. Rainouts were a constant threat for baseball and softball games, and while Milford escaped the worst of it, softball coach Charles Darling has estimated that his team got to hold less than 10 outdoor practices through early May because of the weather.
Other schools, like Middletown High School, weren’t as lucky, and had to make up as many as eight postponed games in the season’s final weeks.
According to Stevenson, athletic directors from all the DIAA member schools plan to meet on May 28 to adjust next year’s schedules, most of which have already been set.
Wagner said the way it will work is that each sport that needs to cut will be handled one at a time, with each school that needs to cut a game having its name tossed in a hat.
When a school’s name is picked, that school’s athletic director chooses which game it would like to drop, and then those two schools will have their schedules in that particular sport completed. No school can be dropped from more than one team’s schedule, to make sure that every team can make its full complement of games without having to schedule new matches at such a late time.
David LaRoss contributed to this article.
Milford, Del. —
