Improving the High-School Basketball System
Moving beyond fairness for the betterment of actual basketball players.
We often state life is not fair, but our desire to appear fair or create fairness thwarts our willingness to improve our sports systems. We favor inertia, as nobody wants to be the bad guy. Changes would not eliminate unfairness, but shift benefits from one group to another. Every decision has a cost. Tolerating the status quo is less controversial than upending traditions and shifting power or benefits. Therefore, we sponsor meetings and solicit opinions, but mostly choose the easier path to do nothing. Issues from playing time to shot clocks to leagues and season length are affected by attempts to be fair.
Grade Exemptions
I have not coached AAU for years, so things may have changed, but the age groups were decided by birthdate with a January 1 cutoff date when I coached. A baby born last Wednesday, on December 31, will play in a different age group than one born a few hours later on January 1. The baby born on December 31 will not play with the baby born the next day, but with one born the previous January 1. The baby born last Wednesday will be in the same age group as a baby who may be walking and talking already. Theoretically, twins could be born minutes apart on either side of New Years and qualify for different age groups, one disadvantaged as among the youngest possible players in the age group, and one advantaged as one of the oldest. Imagine the advantages of the younger twin eventually playing U10 as the oldest player in the league, while the sibling plays as the youngest player in U11. Born minutes apart! Literal twins! How unfair!
People noticed this unfairness because players with late birthdays (October through December) could not play with their classmates, as schools used September 1 as the cutoff date. The twins born on either side of New Years would start school together despite their different birth years and age groups for sports. Not playing with one’s classmates seemed unfair, despite teams being separate from schools. Therefore, AAU instituted grade exemptions to permit those with late birthdays to play with their classmates. Initially, teams were granted three grade exemptions. When we went to AAU Nationals, I learned about grade exemptions, as the champions were reported to have three grade exemptions who scored roughly 80% of their points, causing others to complain.
Naturally, parents and coaches took advantage of this attempt at fairness. Children born in January had an inherent advantage before grade exemptions because of maturational advantages (on average; everyone matures differently), but grade exemptions shifted the clock to give September birthdays the small age advantage. Parents of children with early birthdays (January to March) began redshirting their kindergarteners to regain their rightful advantage. They held back their children in kindergarten for purely athletic reasons. After all, it is not fair for those with a January birthday to forfeit their advantages just so September birthdays can play with their classmates.
Someone is advantaged, and someone is disadvantaged regardless of when the line is drawn. Grade exemptions shifted the advantage from January to September. January birthdays recaptured their advantage by redshirting, which soon rendered age groups meaningless. One simple decision made with good intentions to rectify clearly unfair situations such as twins playing in different age groups because they were born a few minutes apart at New Years devolved into greater unfairness and anarchy. And so it goes. Fair is a matter of perspective.
European youth teams through U19 are age-based with no grade exemptions. My U17 team last year covered players in three grades (freshmen through juniors). Most countries use single-year age groups through U13 or U14 and start two- or three-year age groups at U15 or U16 (U12, U13, U15, U17, U19 or U12, U13, U14, U16, U19). Players can play up, while also playing in their age group (U17 and U19), unlike high-school federations that tend to restrict players to junior varsity or varsity. There is no playing down; you play with your birth year or you play with older players or both.
Shot Clock
We cannot institute a universal high-school shot clock because many argue it is unfair to schools who cannot afford a shot clock, or small schools, or bad teams, or old coaches who do not want to evolve. Suggesting the lack of a shot clock is unfair to those who want to play college basketball or just play games without one team holding the ball is dismissed more easily because of tradition, status quo, and inertia. Requiring a shot clock would benefit some teams and schools more than others, but why run a national federation to protect the needs and desires of bad teams or small schools? Adapt or die. High-school aged players around the world play with a 24-second shot clock, but many suggest a 30- or 35-second shot clock (no chance of adopting a 24 seconds) would ruin high-school basketball, as though stalling for an entire quarter is a desirable part of the game.
High-School Season
For decades, there has been an uneasy relationship between AAU and high-school basketball. Everyone blames AAU for year-round basketball, too many games, lack of fundamentals, and rising injury rates in the NBA, but high-school basketball is the entity that is slower to evolve.
High-school sports are organized as a single entity rather than by sport. High schools play in the same league for every sport, regardless of relative success. Decisions center on traditions, school spirit, and appearances of equity for all athletes rather than the best interests of players on a sport-by-sport basis. Any changes to the basketball schedule are viewed as unfair to three-sport athletes, small schools, high-school football, and tradition without accounting for the unfairness of the current schedule for actual basketball players.
My youth European seasons have started in August and ended in April or May depending on age and success. The official high-school season generally starts in November and ends in February or March, depending on success. Of course, many high schools play in spring, summer, and fall leagues, depending on the state’s rules. The season never really starts or ends; it begins in the summer before freshmen year and ends after the last playoff game of senior year. Schools play year-round in many states, overlapping schedules with AAU basketball outside of the regular season, but extending the high-school season is dead on arrival. Why?
Many schools depend on two or three-sport athletes to compete. These schools do not want to lose games because their players are busy with another sport. We prefer high-school teams compete over the winter holiday break to interfering with other sports. We reduce the number of regular-season games and play multiple games per week to accommodate multi-sport players rather than extend the season to benefit basketball players.
I have coached in two states that played 20 regular season games plus four to six playoff games. Bigger states play more games. Many regions of California require nine or ten playoff wins to win the state championship now. State champions in California and Texas often play 35-40 games, whereas a state champion when I lived in New Mexico played 24 games. Already, the current system is unfair. A teen in California could play nearly twice as many high-school games as a teen in New Mexico over a four-year career!
We played 36 games last year (we also played 6 scrimmages). Our games were 40 minutes, meaning nearly twice as many minutes as a state champion in New Mexico. I believe no more than two players played in all 36 games due to injuries, illnesses, family trips, and playing with other teams, but every player also played additional games with our U19 and/or men’s teams. In a 36-game season, players who did not miss substantial time due to injury averaged around 44 games with a few playing more than 50 games. Playing a U19 game on Wednesday and a U17 game on Saturday is much different than playing in five quarters between the junior varsity and varsity on a Friday night, as some states allow.
Every winter, coaches complain about players missing practices and games during the holiday break. We accommodate multi-sport players, but not family vacations. My European teams generally had two or more weeks between games around the New Year, and at least four to five days with no organized practices. Some clubs even organize camps over the holiday break for those not traveling due to the break in organized practices and games.
The longer schedule based loosely on the school year enables a short vacation around the winter holidays, and again for spring holidays, and limits the number of games per week. We played one game per week, except during the playoffs and the Superleague. Our regular season games were regional (within two hours), but the Superleague and playoffs were national. These games were played in stages, usually with three games over a weekend (travel and play on Friday afternoon, play Saturday, play early on Sunday and travel home). None of our stages was further than five hours away, as we had a relatively favorable schedule. The finals of the playoffs differed, requiring five games in five days for the final four teams.
High-school teams play in the fall, spring, and summer anyway. Why not incorporate these into the season and regulate the total number of games? Restricting teams to a 20-game season is meaningless when they play 20+ games between their fall, spring, and summer leagues. We argue we cannot change because of the high-school experience, specialization, school spirit, and more, but truthfully, the reluctance to change is due to tradition, inertia, and the fear of losing. A high-school basketball coach would rather play three games per week with his or her entire team than lose a few early-season games because a few starters were playing football.
High-School Leagues
Leagues typically are based on geography, school size, and an attempt to be fair to every sport, which results in many blowouts and uncompetitive games. Why not group the best basketball teams together regardless of school size or the success of the tennis team?
In Estonia, we started the season with four stages of four teams from which two teams per group advanced to the A division and two dropped to the B division. There were additional teams who chose not to participate and were placed in the B division, and others who classified themselves as recreational teams in the C division. The purpose was not to give every team a fair chance to qualify for the playoffs or win the championship, but to create the most competitive games. The system was imperfect; the difference between 5th and 9th was less than the difference between 9th and 10th, but the 9th team played in the B division because they lost in the opening stage. There are no perfect answers, but some solutions are better than others and benefit the most possible teams and players.
In Poland, the country is too big for a national regular season. The regular season is regionalized, which was a waste, as we won games by over 100 points. However, they sponsored the Superleague, which replaced the cup competition for the U15 and U17 age groups, and included the top 12 teams. We started with four-team stages, and only the winner advanced to the Superleague. Not every team participated. The Superleague insured competitive games before the playoffs, similar to holiday tournaments.
Why not use the fall leagues to rank teams for the regular season to organize more competitive leagues? In Estonia, all the A division teams qualified for the playoffs. The top four teams received byes to quarterfinals and the bottom four teams played the top four B teams. In Poland, the top four SuperLeague teams qualified directly to the round of 16, while each region sent three or four teams to the first round of the playoffs (roughly 60 teams qualified for the first round). In a city of 32 high schools, for instance, why not play four, eight-team fall leagues to determine the regular-season leagues: Top two from each advance to A, next two to B, etc. Every city and region would differ because of population and area, but the general idea holds: Make the games mean something, whether as part of an extended regular season or to determine the leagues for the regular season.
I suggested this to a high-school coach, and he suggested coaches would sandbag during the qualification games to play in an easier regular-season league. What are we doing? Why do we want easy games and blowouts? Is high-school basketball just about wins and a gaudy record for playoffs and seeding? What’s the purpose of the season when you play two competitive games before the state quarterfinals? There is no perfect system, but there seems to be no impetus to improve.
Poland, a country of 39 million, had one U17 champion; Utah, a state of 3.5 million, has six divisions to be fair to small schools. Why should a rural school with 100 students compete with an urban school of 3000 students? Meanwhile, in Poland, we had the youth programs of professional clubs competing in the EuroCup competing against rural neighborhood clubs. Nobody complained. It is what it is. If you want to play for a big club, move to a big club.
(There is an argument that increasing the number of championships increases the number of participating players because players do not automatically transfer to bigger schools, which maintains programs at smaller schools. Every decision has more than one consequence).
Summary
There are ways to improve youth and high-school basketball, but most people prefer the status quo with which they are comfortable as opposed to the unknown. We lack the willpower to differentiate sports. We want to maintain an illusion of fairness, even as we acknowledge that life is not fair, and the current system is already unfair. We cannot rely on common sense, such as allowing twins to play in the same age group despite different birth years, because someone will complain about not following the rules and using an ineligible player. We have to create new rules attempting to codify common sense, but then others exploit these rules for greater benefits, increasing the unfairness while seeking competitive advantages because regardless of the rhetoric, winning is the greatest motivator throughout our system. We don’t want fair for everyone or for the most players and teams. We want our own perception of fairness, which means we benefit or have the competitive advantage. We deem our advantage to represent fair.
I really think the addition of the shot clock would give players so many extra reps over the course of a game, a season, a middle/high school career.
Not all gyms in London and Brazil have a shot clock so the refs would shout 10 or 5 to let players know.
Call me old-fashioned, but this is much better for the long-term development of kids than just saying we can’t do it because we can’t afford it right now
The age cut-off is tricky. Volleyball moved somewhat recently to a July 1 cut-off, from their previous September 1 cut-off, which I actually think made sense given that many parents now delay entry to 1st grade if their kid is a July/August birthday, rather than have them enter 1st grade having just barely turned 6. Since Nationals are end of June, the rule basically becomes, "you have to be 14 for the whole season. If you turn 15 the day after Nationals, you're good." (Of course, there's since been a few times that Nationals has extended into July, creating situations where you have a few kids who have already, for example, turned 15 still playing U14.)
Volleyball does a grade exemption, but only for juniors. If you're an old junior, you can still play U17, even though you might already be 18. The logic is that U18s (primarily seniors) often play a shorter season (Nationals is in early May) so as not to conflict with going to college summer school, etc. It makes sense to me. But there are no grade exemptions in earlier years: if you're an old 6th grader, you'll have to play U13, not U12.
I think there's also a decent argument that, with modern computer systems, it also would be trivial to just base the age requirement on the individual tournament. If you're playing U15, you need to be 15 for the weekend of that tournament. If you're 15, you can play. Once you turn 16, you need to play 16s.
January cut-off makes much more sense for international competition, because it can purely go by birth-year and college recruiting doesn't drive things internationally. But for American competition, I get the desire to synch things up with birth years.