By Staff
Coaching Management, 9.3, April 2001, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/cm/cm0903/bbncaa.htm
Along with the switch to a rally scoring format, collegiate volleyball is working on another big change: forming an NCAA rules committee. Currently, the NCAA, along with the NAIA and NJCAA, uses the NAGWS rule book, but efforts to establish an NCAA Women’s Volleyball Rules Committee are nearing fruition.
However, a debate this winter over the exact structure of the committee had threatened to hold up its formation. The original proposal called for five representatives from Division I, two from Division II, and two from Division III. This generated opposition from coaches in Division III, who felt it might stack the deck in favor of Division I interests.
The divisions were all the more sensitive to the committee make-up because of the proposal’s timing. Discussions on forming the rules committee were taking place during the same period when the issue of rally scoring vs. side-out scoring was still being debated by the NAGWS rules group, with Division I coaches appearing to back rally scoring more than Division III coaches.
The 5-2-2 structure also ran counter to most NCAA rules committees, which consist of four representatives from Division I, two from Division II, and two from Division III. (The NAGWS rules committee has two representatives each from Divisions I, II, and III, plus high schools, junior colleges, and the NAIA).
“Having an NCAA Rules Committee wasn’t as much an issue as how it would be made up,” says Tina Hill, Associate Athletic Director at California Lutheran University and Chair of the Division III Women’s Volleyball Committee. “The way it was proposed, [the Division I representatives] could dominate the committee with their five votes.”
The Division III Women’s Volleyball Committee asked that the proposal be withdrawn by the Division III Management Council, which did so, referring it back to the volleyball committee and the Division III Championships Committee. Since NCAA by-laws call for playing rules to be the same across divisions, the proposal for forming the volleyball rules committee has to be approved by all three divisions before being enacted.
Meanwhile, the Division I Championships/Competition Cabinet reviewed the proposal at its February meeting and amended it to provide for the traditional 4-2-2 structure plus a non-voting secretary-rules editor. Should no other objections be raised, this clears the way for the measure to be proposed as noncontroversial legislation during the divisions’ Management Council meetings in April. If approved, the committee could be formed as early as August with the intent of producing the first NCAA Women’s Volleyball Rule Book for the 2002 season.
“This piece of legislation was created to streamline efforts and make the current mechanism more user-friendly and overseen by the NCAA,” says Lisa Love, Associate Athletic Director at the University of Southern California and a member of the Division I Women’s Volleyball Committee. “This is the model followed in other sports, it just doesn’t happen to be that way with volleyball now. A lot of that, I think, has to do with the very good relationships with the NAGWS.
“I think,” Love adds, “that a rules writing committee centered strictly on the collegiate view point—and everything that comes with that, from facility demands and overlapping seasons with basketball to the growth of the sport—will be able to have its finger directly on the pulse of the collegiate game. And I think the three divisions can work well together while considering the needs particular to each division.”
Another impetus for forming the rules committee stemmed from efforts to get the NCAA more in line with gender equity. When the NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics recently explored many areas of gender equity, it noted the differences in the development of officials and rule making between men’s and women’s sports, and that the NCAA wrote its own playing rules for more men’s sports than it did for women’s sports.
“Through Title IX discussions,” Hill says, “the association felt that, regardless of whether we needed to be in compliance, we should be in compliance as it relates to rules, championships, etc. There was a real proactive push to evaluate many of these things, and it was through that effort that they realized that some sports were under their guidelines and some were not.”