Published: November 11, 2009 09:20 am      

Nothing much was solved during 13th Region Policy Board meeting

Les Dixon

If you’re expecting to read that the 13th Region Policy Board voted to or not to play the boys and girls 13th Region Tournament at the Arena — don’t get your hopes up.

The meeting turned out to be much ado about nothing.

At times, the meeting was downright confusing.

In all honesty, I left the meeting scratching my head wondering when, and if, ever we’ll know where the 2009-10 13th Region Tournament is going to be.

Another meeting has been scheduled for Nov. 30 and that’s for one representative from each of the 17 high schools to fine tune details with The Arena, but a decision won’t be made on that day from what I understand.

So what did I learn from the meeting?

Well, here we go:

• According to Clay County principal Mike White, it will take 2/3 of the 17 schools voting to get a move to The Arena passed.

• I also found out that each school in the 13th Region should have been getting a share from the 13th Region Tournament since 1994. But I’m not the only one. Everyone else in the 13th Region found that out on Tuesday, too, some 15 years later.

• One school that’s obviously against the move to The Arena is Harlan County. I talked to principal Bob Howard, and he said he wants a chance to showcase his new facility which can hold up to 3,500 people. To be honest, I don’t blame him.

• Everyone in attendance also found out there is another proposal that, according to White, was constructed on Monday at 3 p.m., which might explain why many of the school’s representatives had no clue about it.

The proposal states the tournament would rotate between the nine schools in the 13th Region that have a facility to be able to host the event. Those schools are Bell County, Clay County, Corbin, Harlan County, Knox Central, Middlesboro, North Laurel, South Laurel and Whitley County.

The schools would be divided into two areas (North and South) and would rotate for the next nine years from within those two divisions. Clay County, Corbin, North Laurel, South Laurel and Whitley County each make up the North Division, while Bell County, Harlan County, Middlesboro and Knox Central make up the South Division. The rotation would be North Laurel (2010), Harlan County (2011), Whitley County (2012), Middlesboro (2013), Clay County (2014), Knox Central (2015), South Laurel (2016), Bell County (2017) and Corbin (2018).

• The feeling I got after I left the meeting was that if a vote would have taken place on Tuesday, 11 schools would have voted yes, and five would have voted no. There was one school that didn’t say much of nothing, so I couldn’t get a read on them.

This is what they said:

• Knox Central athletic director Tommy Smith — “If they can guarantee me if I can make as much with it being at The Arena and me not have to any of the work, I would gladly go for it. But I don’t think we got anything accomplished today because I want to know the details before I vote. I thought we would get something accomplished, but we didn’t.”

• Cliff Clinger, General Manager of the Southeast Kentucky Agriculture and Exposition Center — “It’s taking a while. When we first hit the ground running, we came up with the idea of having the tournament at The Arena. We’ve had several meetings at The Arena and we’ve just been advocating the positives just in case there is a possibility The Arena gets to host the event.

“We’re just hopeful that everyone sees the big picture,” he added. “That’s what we’re looking at is the big picture. We want to help the tournament grow. One of the schools said it best, I believe it was Oneida Baptist, they said that if the kids got to come to The Arena, this would be their Rupp (Arena) experience. That says it all.”

• Bob Howard, Harlan County High School principal — “We didn’t know who was calling the meeting, as far as that was concerned. There was a proposal that has been out there for a long time. The KHSAA didn’t call this meeting and the policy board didn’t call this meeting and so we’re saying how could there be a vote when we don’t know what they are voting on?

“As far as my position, why build a $53 million dollar school?” he added. “When you have that kind of facility for our people, why can’t we host it there? I’m protecting my businesses, my fans, my people and my ballplayers. I’m not out here doing this politically for this or for that. My situation is that I have fans that I have to go back to and look in the face. A check mark in the yes column is something I don’t want to do.”

• Bob Howard, Harlan County High School principal — “I came from a small school. Before I came to Harlan County High School, I was in the same boat as these guys. But I think that this board and principals can come together with a plan that can satisfy everyone. As far as I am concerned, up there in the 52nd District, they can come and host the tournament at our place any time they want.

“I don’t know what the second proposal is,” he added. “I am glad there is a second proposal because I feel like there needs to be some discussion. If nothing else, we really, really achieved getting this body together and we have come to a conclusion that we have some problems, so let’s solve them. I’ll make no bones about it, any type of proposal that doesn’t allow Harlan County High School to hold the tournament, I will be against it.”

• Danny Green, Lynn Camp athletic director — “I still feel like if we could have been able to set down with the people of The Arena and iron out a few things all along, it would have come to a vote and it would have been voted in. That’s the only fair thing to the other eight schools that don’t get the opportunity to host the region. People don’t understand, these little schools want to take care of our community, too. Our fans have never had the luxury to come to their own gymnasium or arena and take pride they are getting to host a region tournament. We’ll never see that.

“What you’re saying is that the ole little smaller schools doesn’t matter,” he added. “The second proposal, as to my understanding, went to the schools who can host. In other words, we’re the only ones that count. Maybe it wasn’t their intent, but that’s the way we felt as a small school. I don’t want to dispute the three o’clock time table, but I knew about it before three o’clock by a secondary source. It hurts. It didn’t seem very fair and it’s just ditching us as a small school.”

• Juliann Tackett, KHSAA assistant commissioner — “They’ve got to review their entire tournament structure before they can worry about a site. They’ve got to look into how to divide money to how much they are going to charge fans. They’ve got a lot of issues to deal with and then they can worry about a site.

“There is a lot of arrangements that need to be made,” he added. “It takes a whole lot of people to put together a region tournament and I’m sure Jimmy (Durham) and his people have some work to do. If they know by January, they should be OK.”