Free Throws and Face Offs- Change Abounds, with Jimmie Kaska

This is Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk.

Here are your hosts, Dr. Tim Slecker and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci,

educated educators talking education.

Hey, welcome to Busted Pencils.

It's our special Friday drop, free throws and face-offs.

And we are here today with Civic Media's very own Jimmy K.

Jimmy K, how you doing this morning?

I am doing fantastic.

It is a really, really packed and busy time of the year.

I will say that my normal working hours

don't normally include as much coverage of sports.

But I got to tell you, when you get to the end of winter

sports season with all the overlap,

my days are all about high school sports here at Civic Media,

so it is a busy, busy time of the year.

Well, we love that here, Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk,

educated educators talking education, Jimmy K here today.

But Jimmy, it is that time of year, free throws and face-offs.

It is the busy part of an exciting winter sports season.

Give us some highlights.

What's happening in this coverage that you got going

around the clock these days?

You know, what's funny is on our Civic Media stations,

we're only covering about half the sports in the winter play-by-play-wise.

It's really hard to do play-by-play-of-swimming, I found out.

But that is happening this week with the city championships.

It's not impossible.

It's just not normally a radio sport, right?

But what is typically heard on the radio are things

like wrestling, hockey, and basketball.

And certainly, one of, I think, the coolest events

at Wisconsin is the state individual wrestling tournament.

When you get to state, it's much like state track and field.

You've got literally dozens, hundreds of communities

represented in one venue, in one space.

And it is such a cool coming together

of the Wisconsin High School Sports World

in the Cole Center, with wrestling or at UW the Cross

and track and field.

It's absolutely one of my favorite events.

And that rolls into individual sectionals

as if tomorrow for both boys and girls wrestling

with the state meets happening next week in Madison.

So wrestling is in a really good spot right now.

With that, the team sectionals were earlier this week.

It's also the start this week of our high school hockey playoffs.

So we are in regional mode right now.

And so this is a week where it's kind of the elimination week.

You kind of eliminate, because it's an all-play,

you know, every team gets in.

This week you eliminate the teams.

You get, you really cut it down to the core

of the sectionals next Tuesday.

And for my money next week with the sectionals,

the two games you play in sectionals

are some of the best hockey broadcasts,

a broadcast you could ever hope to be a part of.

But that's not to discount what's happening

in the regionals that are happening here today.

So hockey happening right now, which is amazing.

It's been one of my favorite sports to call.

And then next week you launch into basketball

with girls basketball first.

And then boys basketball the week after.

The girls' brackets are set.

The boys' brackets will be announced on Sunday.

And the basketball tournaments tend

to be a very large revenue generator for the WIA.

They are a very important tournament

to the bottom line in continuing what the WIA provides

to student athletes in Wisconsin.

So the winter sports season is really ramping up

here the next two weeks.

And for both the next four or five weeks,

you're going to see a lot of us here in the sports department

at Civic Media kind of running around here,

because there's a lot going on.

Yeah, that's amazing.

I mean, this is the time of year.

Winter sports, a fire and on fourth cylinder.

Lots of exciting ways to get out and support those.

Like we call them here, bust of pencils,

essential activities.

Sometimes they're referred to as extra curriculars,

but we know that their core experience

is that our student athletes get to have

not only with their school community,

but really more broadly with their communities in Wisconsin.

It's so important.

It's like one of those great events.

We talk about sporting events, but to play off,

Neeson, it's one of those great combinations

of good sports, great community activity,

and involving young people in that next step

in their educational journey.

So huge.

Jimmy, I got to ask you, you know I'm a huge storm fan.

Give us an update on my storm.

How are they doing?

Well, it's the first week of the playoffs.

So they're still at it, as does everybody.

But, you know, it is.

Yep, you know, what's interesting about,

especially a sport like Girls Hockey

with co-ops and everything like that,

the playoff field is so small.

And there's really just a core group of teams

like the storm that end up making it

pretty much, pretty far in the playoffs

just about every year.

That's kind of exciting when you're in those programs,

but you know, there's only three,

maybe not even three dozen programs in the state.

And a lot of them are up to dozen schools in a co-op.

Like, you know, it's a little concerning on a few levels,

but you know, the programs,

there have been a couple of really interesting cases

in Girls Hockey of, you know, for example,

in Eastern Wisconsin, where, you know,

you have these small schools that kind of,

they co-op for a while, then they break apart,

and you see they can walk back up, for example.

You know, they have a, you know,

they have programs up in that area.

And all of a sudden, you know,

they become standalone programs,

people step into it, volunteer,

and get these things going again,

but it's so hard as a small school in Hockey

and boys or girls to compete against co-ops that might,

like for example, in the Madison area,

you have two co-ops, one for the,

basically the Western Dane County

and one for the Eastern Dane County.

That's a lot of student population to pull from.

And then you're talking about a small school

in the Northern Wisconsin,

where your pool might be, you know, a thousand students.

So, there's some real disparities,

and that's a whole other conversation for another day,

but just a, that's a long answer to your question.

Things are good for an established program

in the Hockey playoffs.

Well, we're looking forward to it,

rooting for those storm to, you know,

make a deep run and hopefully go for another state title.

So keep up that good work.

All these teams headed into their playoff season.

Jimmy, this is also the time

of you where there's a ton of stuff on the table.

All kinds of decisions and proposals to be made

that impact, you know, our school essential activities

like these sports.

Give us an overview kind of highlight.

I know that, you know, we have summer contact stuff, NIL,

and some big things coming out of football.

So give us an overview on initiatives

that have been on the table.

So I'll start with the things that are approved.

And that's in football.

Football had three major changes.

Two of them are just in regards

to qualification into the postseason.

So you used to be, you just had to win

more than have your conference games and you were in.

The new proposal has a matrix, a formula

for playoff qualification that is based on your wins

and your opponents wins as long as you defeat them.

So it's a point system that adds up

and the more points you get, you're into the playoffs.

And they did this.

They designed this plan before the mistake that WIA made

in seeding the, or setting the playoff field

in both 11 player and eight player football.

They corrected eight player football.

They did not correct 11 player football

and had to apologize for it later.

So that scenario really spurred momentum for this plan,

which was overwhelmingly approved by coaches.

In fact, there's only about 420 high school football

head coaches in the state.

400 of them responded to the Wisconsin Football

Coaches Association survey.

That's the association that all high school football coaches

of Wisconsin belong to.

There's my membership card.

Always have it on hand.

And 87 and a half percent, seven out of every eight coaches

in the entire state approved and agreed with this plan,

which got it moved through committees pretty quickly

and then was approved by the Board of Control.

It also, for the first time, sets in your division.

So football is unlike any other sport

in Wisconsin, not every team makes the playoffs,

which is why you need a qualification in the first place.

And this play assess is completely transparent.

There's no computer algorithm.

There's no hidden anything.

There's no coaches meeting.

It's straight up, you got to win games

and your opponents have to win games when you beat them.

The other part of it is it sets your division before the year.

You used to have to wait till the end of the year

to know what division you're in.

Now, you know, in 11 player football,

the 51 other teams in your division,

you're competing against for 32 playoff spots.

That is a big change as well.

It also incorporates the WIA's tournament performance factor,

which moves you up divisions based on

if you make it further into the state tournament.

So you know going into the year,

for example, my high school will be division seven.

So the team I coach, we are very solidly D7

and we have 52 teams to compete with.

We're about the 20th smallest program

in 11 player football right now.

So no danger of us moving up,

but we know where we're at

and we know who we're all up against in our division.

That's a big change.

And I think the last one, and this speaks to the equity

in high school football and something that coaches

have been asking for for a while,

is that in eight player football

with the increase in small schools going to that,

there's over 70 programs now at eight player football,

but the playoff field was only 16 teams.

So that meant last year there were two lost teams,

teams that were going six and two in the regular season

that couldn't make the playoffs.

Whereas in 11 player football,

you had a team that was three and six

make the playoff field, right?

So now the field has been expanded to 32.

The season now starts at the same time as 11 player football.

So things like camp and equipment issues

and everything like that are now equally aligned.

And their playoff round because of that move,

you know, extends by one because they have 32 teams

in the playoff field.

Their championship will still be in Wisconsin Rapids.

They'll still have one less week of regular season,

but it does get 32 out of the roughly 70,

I think it's 76 teams right now in eight player football.

So about half, maybe a little less than half.

And some of those eight player teams

are ineligible for the playoffs

because their enrollment's over 200.

So there's another rule in eight player.

If your enrollment's over 200 for a three year span

the average, you can't make the playoffs.

So I would say probably a little more than half

of eight player teams are not eligible for the post season.

You also would ask me about summer contact and NIL.

These are not approved things,

but these are things that are up for consideration

at the annual meeting in April.

Should they pass the board of control votes

in March and April right before the annual meeting?

So every month there's a WIA Bulletin that comes out

and this month's Bulletin included two,

I think two really key, there are multiple things.

There's a lot of little things

and I don't mean to say little as in their not significant.

They are to your sport or to the legislative body,

but there are two things

that I think are going to dominate headlines from this.

One of them is the same talk we had this time last year.

NIL, name, image, likeness.

It's in college sports, a lot of people would argue

that it's done some pretty crazy things to college sports.

I mean, evidence, the big 10 now stretches

from the Pacific Ocean to New York, right?

So NIL has really taken over in college sports.

Well, it is in the vast majority of high schools already.

In fact, Wisconsin is among the last dozen-ish states

that has no NIL policy in its governing body

for high school sports.

So this is back on the table.

It is very similar to the proposal last year

and the difference this year from last year

is that last year it was introduced

to about eight weeks to go

and it was a rush to get everybody educated

and that was the number one reason cited in it failing

by a pretty good margin last year.

But now we've had a full year to digest this.

And I think school administrators have had enough time to review it.

And I think people understand that if it's not going to happen

through this process with the schools deciding it,

that the state legislature might have to take it up

like they had to in Colorado.

And you don't want the state legislator setting your policy

for things that you're trying to govern.

And the other thing that is coming up

is really in regards to summer contact.

Currently, you're limited to five days in the summer

between June 1st and July 31st

that you can have any contact as a coach with student athletes.

Now it's a little kept secret

that a lot of programs of the offseason

have very robust weight training programs.

And I'm using quotation marks.

You can't hear this, but quotation marks voluntary workouts,

things like that that happen.

It's pretty well known that that teams kind of skirt

the rules a bit in order to feel competitively.

The rule, the five days was designed

to protect students from having to spend

their whole summer playing a sport, basically, right?

And the intentions are good, but in practice,

that's not really what was happening.

So now it just creates two lanes of time,

all of June and most of July for teams and coaches

to gather and have instruction.

What levels that that'll be at remains to be seen.

And honestly, that is something that is going to have

a lot more discussion on it

before we get to that vote coming up here in April.

Well, absolutely, man, Jimmy, thanks for these updates.

There's so much we could get into with each of these.

I think I'm going to have to invite you back on

and Tim and I, you know, pick your brain around high school

NIL, like that's got to be, I would love

to have that conversation.

Maybe even we'll talk to some of our school administrators

who are grappling with that as well,

because certainly at the college level,

it's been, you know, it's been turning things upside down

for the last few years.

So I have to imagine it's an interesting conversation

for high school.

And hey, you know, summer contact,

I love this, you know, revisiting some of these rules

and regulations around things,

because activities in the summer can be overwhelming,

but they can, kids, their structure,

their ways to keep them invested,

not only in their school,

but in their friendships and community

in ways where they're continuing to be mentored by folks.

So rather than just turning them loose for the summer,

I love to hear great conversations around this.

Just what I like this,

because it's what we do here at bus depensals, right,

is we've got to recognize some democracy and action, Jimmy.

The coaches, you being one of them,

and that's great for our listeners to remember.

We're always talking about this,

that like coaching is, you know,

fine large volunteer, you know,

unless you happen to also be like,

like I was a, you know, a teacher at the school,

which still it was kind of like,

part of my teaching responsibility.

So it was like quasi volunteer,

because it doesn't account for all those hours,

but it's fine large volunteer work

that, you know, goes so much further beyond just

who's going to play in the game today,

what's the practice plan,

and you know, did we win or lose?

You know, they're really participating.

They're doing civic responsibility here, right?

Democracy and Action,

and great turnout for Wisconsin football coaches.

Big two thumbs up for the Wisconsin coaches.

400 of the 420 of you responded to, you know,

to basically vote that chime in to say,

to have a say on those football, you know, issues.

And so that's huge.

That's great example of democratic participation

from our football coaches.

I will add the proposal was written by two or three,

actually, of the coaches in the association as well.

So the proposal originated with coaches to begin with.

So while we could easily wrap up there

and give big cheers for heading into the exciting part

of winter sports, Jimmy,

little less cheer coming from my direction on this issue,

but you know, some big things hitting the sports world,

you know, last week in the NCAA and you wrote,

I think a really helpful article about the WIA, you know,

federal guidance, following federal guidance,

the ban on transgender students from girl sports.

Give us a little update kind of a summary of that.

We'll point our listeners towards Jimmy's article.

But to me, I mean, this is one of those moments

where here we are in this, you know,

this onslaught of executive orders, this political, you know,

making, making our schools and classrooms

and fields, locker rooms and sports programs,

a battle ground for politics.

But Jimmy, give us an update on this, on this ban

and kind of how you see it and where things are at.

There's been a series of executive orders.

One of them, a couple of them, in fact, Title IX,

one of them specifically dealt with participation

in girl sports.

So now essentially it boils down to this.

If you were assigned mail at birth,

you can now longer participate in girl sports

or women's sports at the NCAA level,

the WIA adopted this policy on Wednesday.

It came out about a week after the NCAA's decision

and about two weeks after President Donald Trump's

executive order on it.

So it is one of those things that we had grappled with

as a local school district, as a school board member,

about whether, you know, it's Title IX, whatever,

like we had a couple of board members who were asking,

can we roll back Title IX to 2020?

Well, the Trump administration took care of that.

I will just say I'm speaking for myself

and not for the board.

I personally was not in favor of that.

And I don't like the idea of excluding any student

athlete from participation in anything.

I believe that these are opportunities

that benefit student athletes, regardless of what it is

that you identify as your origin, religion, any of that.

I think everybody deserves a chance

to participate and represent your school.

But the decision has been made.

It is part of the policy now in both the WIA and NCAA.

And, you know, there's the threat too

in these executive orders about pulling back federal funding.

If you're not taking part in these things,

following these executive orders, obviously,

the diversity, equity, and inclusion programs,

if you have those, the high schools in Wisconsin

get what, about five, six percent depending on your district,

you're funding from federal government.

But when you look at your budget, how do you overcome that?

Schools, you know, we've had over 250 schools go to referendum

in the last four years.

And, you know, it tells you that a four to five percent

hole in your budget from federal funds

would be pretty impossible to overcome

given the state of school funding in Wisconsin.

We've also had this happen in the legislature.

We've seen a number of proposals come through on this.

We had one last session.

We'll probably have another one this session

trying to codify it in case Title IX changes down the road.

This is, it is a really hot topic for debate.

Unfortunately, I'm on the side of believing

that everyone should have an ability to participate in things.

There's no setup for people who follow outside gender norms.

You know, there's no third bucket.

You have boys, girls, and a third.

That doesn't exist.

And it's not practical to have that exist either.

So, but that is what has happened this week.

I did recap it and give some links to executive orders,

the NCAA policy.

The NCAA policy, by the way, is very comprehensive.

I will say this about the NCAA.

There's a lot of things you can say about it,

especially as it applies to college sports

and how crazy it's gotten,

especially the division one level.

But the policy regarding transgender student athletes,

I think is quite comprehensive

and includes a lot of detail about what they look for,

everything from testing to counseling to everything.

And it's very thorough.

And I will add this, the NCAA and their guidance

did include a lot of resources for mental health,

for physical health, for that matter.

And I think that's a credit just being aware

of the situation that we're in,

that we need those resources more than ever

for our student athletes, whether it's college kids

or obviously high school kids here in Wisconsin.

Well, Jimmy, thanks for that work.

And thanks for being on here with us

for this episode of free throws and face offs.

Man, I could dive into this.

I just want to say, I'm with you, Jimmy.

I've unfortunately for these decisions,

our experience with opportunities

for however you identify out there,

for you to participate in the sport that you love,

that you're good at,

that is the right appropriate level for your play.

It shouldn't really come down to that archaic way of,

what parts did you have on a doctor looked, right?

And so hopefully we get this right over time.

I understand the circumstances we're in right now.

Thanks for everything, Jimmy.

Hopefully we live to see a better opportunity

for all of our members of our community

to participate in these great essential activities

as we call them here at Bust & Pencils.

So thanks for Bust & Pencils with us, Jimmy.

I appreciate the time it's always, guys.

And now for your moment of Zinn.

I had always insisted that a good education

was a synthesis of book learning

and involvement in social action

that each enriched the other.

I wanted my students to know

that the accumulation of knowledge

while fascinating in itself is not sufficient

as long as so many people in the world

have no opportunity to experience that fascination.

Hey, thanks for listening to Bust & Pencils

free throws and face offs.

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