From: Richard J. Yanco Date: Thurs, Apr 13 2006 11:51 pm Yesterday the rules committee met for 2.5 hours at Worcester Academy. Present: Therese O'Garr, league president, Worcester Academy Richard Yanco, league vice-president, Worcester Academy Sylvia Bullock, Nashoba Regional High School Nancy DiLeo, Wachusett Regional High School Robin Owens, Worcester North High School Bryan Sullivan, Hudson High School Committee recommendations: TEAM COMPOSITION The committee recommends that we remove the rule stating that a school can have no more than one incomplete team. In its place, we propose that a school may have more than one incomplete team, but the students on each incomplete team must be distributed into rounds as evenly as possible. This achieves the same goals as the current rule (making the meet run more smoothly, not allowing schools to avoid rounds) but eliminates the problems with the current rule (schools being forced to take zeros, students working alone in the team round). The committee recommends that if too many students are assigned by a coach to a given round, a one-point penalty should be given to each student in that round. So that penalties of this sort are rare, it should be a responsibility of the Head Scorer to check each scoresheet as it is passed in, to confirm that students are properly distributed into rounds. If any team has students incorrectly distributed into rounds, the Head Scorer should tell the coach, who should immediately fix the problem. In that case, individual penalties would be assessed only if the coach refuses to fix the distribution of students. (Blatant example: if a coach places all five students on a team into the Algebra I round, intending to inflate individual scores, and refuses to undo that, all of those students will be assessed a one-point penalty. Currently there is a team penalty but no individual penalty, which is completely ineffective if the coach is trying to inflate individual scores without regard for team scores.) The committee recommends that when a coach repeatedly or flagrantly disregards rules, that the President will send a written warning letter to that coach; if the coach persists, the President will write a letter to the coach's principal. AWARDS The committee recommends a change in the number of team awards per class. Currently each class receives three awards, regardless of the number of schools in the class. The committee proposes that at least one third of the schools in each class should receive a team award. In addition, the executive board may decide to give team awards to more schools, to a maximum of one half of the schools in the class. Specifically, if scores are close, additional team awards can be given, whereas if there is a large gap, additional awards would not be given. The committee recommends two new individual awards, for "Most Improved Junior" and "Most Improved Senior," to be awarded to the junior and senior students, not among the top 40 overall students, who increase their score the most from one year to the next. To be eligible, a student must have attended all four varsity meets in the previous year. The committee recommends that these two students receive plaques, not certificates. If these awards were given this year, they would have been awarded to Rebecca Belisle of St. Peter-Marian (senior) and Sabrina Boyd of Tantasqua (junior). The committee recommends one new team award, for "Most Improved Team," awarded to the school which increases its raw score the most from one year to the next. The team must have attended all four varsity meets in the previous year. A school may not win this award twice in any five-year period, unless its second raw score increase is measured against its highest raw score in the previous five years. (e.g., a school that scores 0-50-100 could win two awards for two fifty-point increases, but a school that scores 0-50-0-50 could not win again, since the second 50 would be compared to the previous 50, for a zero point increase.) STUDENT DISQUALIFICATION The committee recommends that the Meet Moderator should announce, at the beginning of every meet round, that two students from the same school may not sit at the same table. Any students discovered to violate this rule will be given a zero for the round. QUALIFYING FOR STATE CHAMPIONSHIPS The committee recommends that the rules by which schools are selected for the MAML state championships should be placed in the bylaws, with an understanding that that portion of the bylaws will be updated to contain the current MAML rules whenever MAML changes the rules. DUES The committee recommends that the bylaws clarify the dues that schools should pay: specifically, how a school should calculate the number of teams to pay for (since the number of teams can change from meet to meet). The committee recommends that the average number of students per meet should be rounded to the nearest whole team, so an average of 12 students counts as two teams while an average of 13 students counts are three teams. The committee recommends that it be an official duty of the Vice President to provide the Treasurer with a list of participating schools, the average number of students per varsity/freshman meet, and the correct amount of dues for that school. If a school has overpaid or underpaid, the differential will be added or applied to the dues for the following year. The committee recommends that there be a prepayment discount or late payment penalty for dues. This would integrate with the previous recommendation -- a school can pay what it thinks it will owe, and if it overpays or underpays a correction can be made the following year. (Right now some schools wait until the end of the season to pay, because they don't know what they will owe.) STIPENDS The committee recommends that when a paid officer (QSC, President, VP) cannot or will not perform one of his/her stated duties, so that another person must be paid to perform the duty, that the stipend given to the second person sohuld be subtracted from the stipend given to the officer. We would probably have to grandfather a current situation, whereby we are paying Lucas Markgren to do part of Dwayne Cameron's duty (without reducing Dwayne's stipend). --- The committee discussed but did not think it was worth pursuing.... 1. Having easier questions for schools in lower divisions (or making a committee to investigate it) 2. Allowing older students to compete unofficially at freshman competitions 3. Declaring the student with the greatest number of Quality Points the league "MVP" --- I think that's a fairly accurate summary. We should have proposed verbiage for the bylaws completed by the spring coaches' meeting. Rick