Last week, the Minnesota State High School League made some interesting decisions at their board meeting. First, it was decided to add mercy rules to basketball and football for when games get too lopsided. Second, the board voted against reducing the number or weights in wrestling from 14 to 12 or 13.
Personally, I disagree with adding the mercy rule for basketball. The short version is running time will start when one team goes up by 35 points and continue as long as it stay above 30. Two reasons why I don’t like it: 1. Coaches now how to manage games, and are well aware of when the game is not competitive and should ease up. When the game is too lopsided, it provides a great opportunity for coaches to use players farther down the bench during varsity action (same for football), in my opinion. 2. What is the difference whether a team is up by 30 or 50, once it gets to that point, it is a thorough defeat, no matter the score. The players on the losing team are going to feel disappointment regardless if they are losing 75-45 or 75-25.
Keeping the weights at 14 in wrestling is a little more tricky for me. I don’t have a problem with it because in conference and section play, generally th schools squaring off are of similar size, and have the same struggles in filling the weights. Obviously, taking out one or two weights would make teams more competitive, but again, the teams are in the same boat. It would be interesting to see what coach Bryan Clemen would have to say about it and if he struggles to fill weights . I’ll try to get a little something in for the paper this week.
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