DON McDERMOTT MORE COLUMNS Advertisement

What is amazing about the decision of the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association's decision to move Pahrump Valley into Class 4-A, it creates more problems than it solves.

What should be the major concern for the NIAA is the status of the Southern Nevada Class 3-A League.

With the departure of Pahrump Valley in the 2008-2009 school year, only four schools -- Las Vegas Faith Lutheran, Boulder City, Overton Moapa Valley and Mesquite Virgin Valley -- will remain.

Which means, an already impossible scheduling fiasco, will be infinitely worse.

And if Bret Walter, the Faith Lutheran athletics director, wasn't kidding, the Crusaders will petition to move to 4-A. There is little enthusiasm at that private school to compete in a four-team league.

What will Moapa Valley, Boulder City and Virgin Valley do if Faith's appeal is honored? Heaven help Matt Messer, Bob Northridge and Charlie Hurley (those schools' athletics directors) if the Faith Lutheran hierarchy is serious.

Class 3-A in Nevada will be a bad joke, with only 11 schools still active. Actually, retaining Pahrump Valley's into 3-A will not alleviate the trouble already facing that classification.

Secondly, the addition of Pahrump Valley to the Sunset Region Southwest Division will not help member schools (Bishop Gorman, Sierra Vista, Durango, Spring Valley, Western, Bonanza and Clark) in scheduling in seven sports Pahrump Valley does not offer.

Those sports are boys volleyball, boys and girls bowling, boys and girls tennis, and boys and girls swimming. In two instances (swimming and tennis), Pahrump Valley does not have the facilities to immediately incorporate them into its athletics program.

And that situation will endure until PVHS gets some major financial assistance.

It costs big bucks to build an enclosed swimming pool, since that activity is offered during the winter season. And how many public tennis courts are there in the Pahrump Valley? I don't know, either.

Bowling could be added easily, since the Pahrump Nugget Casino has a 24-lane facility. Boys volleyball is played in the spring in 4-A and each of those Southwest schools has enough enrollment to draw players interested in that sport. Pahrump Valley, on the other hand, will have to consider boys volleyball rather carefully, since the school fields baseball, track, and golf teams in the spring.

We are really curious about what the Southwest 4-A athletics directors think about the NIAA's decision. (We will answer that question in a future story; my only hope is that the people who run those athletics departments are frank and earnest in stating their opinions).

It is no secret. Las Vegas schools do not like the idea of having to travel through the pass to play at Pahrump Valley High School. And I don't think that opinion will change with Pahrump Valley IN their league. I was told in 2001, the year I moved here, that Las Vegas 4-A officials would establish the enrollment cutoff at five more students, just to keep Pahrump Valley from moving up in class. Six years ago, they didn't figure on the NIAA board of control would ever strictly enforce enrollment limits as a major criteria for league alignment.

There are some other questions, like:

What happens to girls soccer? It is played in the fall in Class 3-A? It is a winter sport in 4-A.

How much flak will Pahrump Valley catch if it decides not to fund those seven sports the school currently does not offer? There is no revenue sharing possible, like there is in the big leagues.

Of course, Pahrump Valley's student enrollment has to grow significantly, just to be able to think about walking the hallways, recruiting boys and girls eager (pardon the expression) to play tennis, or swim, or bowl.

Pahrump Valley officials (re: Nye County School District) have some concerns of their own, not the least of which is what size high school should be built and will there be major upgrades to the current athletics facilities.

(We like the idea of expanding the current campus to include the required buildings to house classrooms, laboratories, and advance curriculum programs. The football stadium is to get 1,700 new seats in that reconstruction project. There then has to be major consideration given to lighting the baseball, fast-pitch softball and soccer fields, each of which should also have artificial turf.)

But, we digress.

One thing must be done, sooner if not later, and that is to hire a full-time athletics director and tell him or her that they cannot be a coach. Moving into Class 4-A requires extraordinary attention when it comes to hiring coaches, scheduling, working on improving and maintaining facilities (for games and practice), and a myriad of other details that keep an athletics program from stumbling.

And when head coaches are hired, they should be aware of how important it will be to add assistants who know the game he or she is to coach.

Class 4-A athletics are big time in Nevada; boys and girls who play at that level receive more attention from college recruiters than do their sisters and brothers who play in Classes 3-A, 2-A and 1-A. And that is in all sports.

There will be plenty more to say on the realignment issue, once some answers are provided and other opinions are offered.

It's been written before. The time to prepare for Class 4-A is today ... yesterday even.

The task is difficult, but with proper direction and with due consideration for the welfare of the student-athletes and the integrity of the programs offered, success can be achieved.