San Diego Prep Update : Baseball Coach Wants Equal Time in Practice

SAN DIEGO —  Sam Blalock, Mount Carmel High baseball coach, wants teams that play during the spring and winter to get as much practice time as sports played in the fall.

Blalock’s complaint centers on the additional 15-day sanctioned practice time fall sports are allowed during late May of each school year.

“All the fall sports are given 15 days in the spring to prepare for the upcoming season,” Blalock said. “My thought was, if they can have the extra time in the spring, why can’t we have the same amount of time in the winter?”

Kendall Webb, San Diego Section commissioner, said any team can hold practice 365 days a year, provided it does not use school equipment or facilities and does not require that team members are present. Examples of this kind of practice are summer basketball or winter baseball, where players other than team members can play.

Blalock said the outside practices are fine, but it is not fair for fall sports to hold sanctioned practices while winter and spring sports cannot. At the June 17 Baseball Advisory Committee meeting, Blalock proposed, and the committee agreed, that spring and winter sports also receive the 15 days of school-sanctioned practice time.

“(The section) has to give everybody the 15 days of practice time, or nobody the 15 days,” he said.

The committee’s recommendation will be forwarded to the section’s board of governors which has the final say. Webb said the committee’s proposal has a slim chance of being approved by the section because there has not been a “big enough push for it within the San Diego Section.”

Webb said he believes the section board would eliminate spring practices for fall sports before it would add sanctioned practices for winter and spring sports.

Split decision: The San Diego Section Track and Field Advisory Committee, composed of high school coaches around the county, has recommended to the section’s Board of Governors that the county’s high school track teams be divided into 2-A and 3-A divisions.

The split would allow smaller schools and schools with weaker programs a chance at winning a section championship, said Mike Klepper, Morse track coach.

The move is not likely to take place next season because it would create several problems in planning and with facilities, according to Webb. A major obstacle is finding adequate facilities for league preliminaries and finals for the two divisions, he said.

Only three county tracks have all-weather surfaces--San Diego State, Point Loma College and Mira Costa College. Seating at these tracks is limited, as is their availability in late May. Preliminaries and finals would have to be on the same day for the two divisions, but it is not feasible to hold them at the same site because of the length of the meet, Webb said.

Klepper said forming two divisions is a sound idea, but it will be hard to find enough coaches to coordinate two preliminaries and finals.

The length of the track season would also have to be shortened by a week to squeeze in a Masters meet at the end of the season. The Masters meet matches the top athletes from the two divisions to qualify athletes for the state meet.

“There is a possibility of two divisions, but I don’t know if (the coaches) want it enough to go through all the machinations to carry it out,” said Webb.