NIAA board grants preliminary approval to realignment rubric

Realignment in Southern Nevada took another small step forward Tuesday.

The Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association’s Board of Control gave preliminary approval to the Nevada Rubric, which will be used to realign the area’s current Class 3A and Class 4A schools for the 2012-13 school year.

The board still must give final approval to the rubric in October. Before then, the 37 Southern Nevada schools affected by the rubric will know into which classification they fall.

The driving forces behind the realignment are competitive balance within leagues, saving money on transportation, and easing scheduling concerns for some schools — notably current Class 3A members Boulder City, Moapa Valley and Virgin Valley, which occasionally are required to leave the state to find sufficient non-league games to fill a schedule.

Schools are currently classified based solely on enrollment figures.

The rubric, created in January by a Southern Nevada committee, uses a point system for nearly every sport for the 2009-10 and 2010-11 school years.

The points for each school in each sport are totaled, and the top 12 point totals in the Sunset and Sunrise Regions will form a 24-team classification in the 2012-13 and 2013-14 school years. Each region will have two six-team leagues.

The remaining 13 schools will be in a separate classification. The rubric specifically names Boulder City, Moapa Valley, Virgin Valley, Faith Lutheran, Pahrump Valley and Tech to be six of those 13 schools.

With spring sports yet to be completed, it’s not possible to know where every school will fall in the realignment process.

Two major items still remain unclear, though.

The first is how the new alignment will affect the NIAA’s postseason.

It’s possible the top classification would correspond to Northern Nevada’s Class 4A and the 13-team new classification would match up with the North’s Class 3A.

But it’s also possible the NIAA could create additional state championships for each sport.

Also yet to be determined is how the rubric will be applied going forward. Under the current cycle, the 2011-12 and 2012-13 school years would be used to determine placements for the 2014-15 school year with teams potentially shifting from one classification to the other.

That plan, though, would use two different alignments (the current one for ‘11-12 and the new one for ‘12-13), creating unequal comparisons.

The Southern realignment committee is scheduled to meet again in June to discuss the remaining issues.

The final point totals will be determined in May, and the Board of Control will discuss school alignment at its June 23-24 meeting in Reno. A final vote will come at the Oct. 4-5 meeting in Las Vegas.