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I found this to be a thought provoking column and a pretty good take.

This won't have any effect on three-sport athletes. Top athletes have always played out of season, they just did it with club teams or private training places. This change just means they can do it with their school teammates if they choose.

I see this as a reaction to AAU basketball and it is not just a 3 sport athlete issue. It will become a choice and a factor for almost every HS athlete at some point.

As soon as 1 player chooses a fall or spring basketball league/team that is now easier to fill with HS teammates and friends, more local and cheaper than AAU, and coached by his/her HS Asst Coach over any other HS sport it has affected that school.

According to the Appleton PC article HS asst. coaches will be able to coach. "Member schools voted to approve the measure last Wednesday by a vote of 258-72. Those workouts and assemblies cannot involve head coaches, but assistant coaches and others associated with the particular program are fair game."

This change in the rules will give players different options and those options will be more appealing than current scenarios which will take away from other HS sports. If you don't love playing HS football or CC but you do it in order to fill time or get in shape for bball would you drop those sports in order to play for a newly formed HS fall bball team/league coached by your HS asst coach. You might, and doing detracts from those other HS sports. I can see that this change will especially affect many small schools and girls sports in particular.

Continuing to prohibit offseason contact by asst coaches is different than what the Appleton PC article stated.

If that hasn't changed I wouldn't feel so strongly that this will change much in the minds or in th echoices of HS athletes.

After witnessing first hand the off-season demands of a 3 sport athlete, and because of it watching the rapid decline of multi-sport athletes at our school, I've come to the conclusion we no longer really care. Our younger child should just take up fishing.

Does this mean that an assistant basketball coach can legally coach a skill session with his basketball players during the off season?

APC is incorrect.....neither the head coach or the assistant coaches may coach outside of summer contact days.

To help clarify the decision - the driving force behind the rule was the inability of AD's to police what their athletes were doing on club volleyball, club soccer, AAU basketball, softball leagues, etc. In addition the consequences could include forfeiture from the state tournament.

With that type of liability placed on AD's and the difficulty in policing the athletes it became a no brainer in my opinion.

<How has the new rule made it easier for AD's to police?>

Because it's no longer in effect..... thought that was self explanatory.

The rule was outdated...no need to change the punishment - changing the rule was the right call.

The old rule said that teams "could not resemble" the high school team during out of season competition. So if a group of girls basketball players wanted to play in a tournament in the spring, they "couldn't resemble" the actual high school team. Problem was, what does that mean? Does that mean add one non-high school team player (someone who doesn't play at all, or maybe someone from a different school?)? Does it mean more than half? What does that mean?

At one point the WIAA tried to quantify it by saying that no more than 60% of the team and 60% of the players on the court/field at any point could be from the same school. But that placed the onus of compliance on kids, on untrained and perhaps rules-uneducated volunteers or parents; the schools had no way to be involved in it to make sure it wasn't happening or that it was being followed. After a year or two of that 60% rule, they just changed it back to "cannot resemble", which again left all kinds of ambiguity.

The other thing is that it was virtually unenforcable. Let's say a team DID have all high school players on it. How do you prove it? Is a witness statement enough? Then anyone could say they saw them doing it and it's the Wild West. Basically unless the WIAA had visual proof or someone admitted/self-reported it, they couldn't do anything about it. In my four years here and many years following high school sports previously, I don't recall a single example of a team/player being suspended or disciplined, because it was so hard to actually prove.

Again, the rule was hard to define, hard to prove, hard to enforce, and limited what athletes could freely do. Long overdue change in my opinion.

And to clarify, the rules are the same for head coaches and assistant coaches -- they cannot be involved in games/tourneys/practices in any way and they cannot be mandatory.

The five summer contact days that were referenced earlier have been in place for several years now for basketball, that isn't something new.

They're claiming this rule change has already affected their program or that specialization in general is affecting their program?

Almost sounds like Preble. I say that because many of their alumni who were multi-sport athletes spit out the word "specialization" a lot when referring to the school today.

What I find interesting is one alumni who played 3 sports & went on to get a college scholarship, today says if she had to do it all over again she would have cut back to 1-2 sports.

(I'm thinking "Why?, apparently the multi-sports got you there!?)

Another thing I find interesting is if it is Preble, that's scary! They have an outstanding track program and to think they could be even better - that is amazing. They have a lot of good looking athletes out there.

There are many little nuances but here is the main difference: The old rule specified out of season during the school year differently than out of season outside the school year. While school was in session in fall or spring, the rules were more stringent v. in the summertime the rules were more relaxed...meaning hs teammates were not to play together in the spring or fall...meaning that AAU had the monopoly on players that want to play in the spring or fall. All this does is allow hs teammates to play together in the fall or spring (at a much less cost, AAU is expensive for many families), they were already playing together in the summer.