It's official: Mitchell joins SAC

By JAMAL THALJI

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 30, 2000

NEW PORT RICHEY -- It was probably one of the most anti-climatic votes in the Sunshine Athletic Conference's nine-year history.

The SAC executive committee voted to accept Mitchell as the conference's ninth member at Thursday's meeting of county athletic directors and administrators at Ridgewood. Mitchell opens in the fall in the Trinity area near Seven Springs Middle School.

"It was something that we kind of thought would happen," Mitchell athletic director Ian Mooney said. "But it's good to be in the conference and know that things are put together right."

Of course, the Mitchell vote was pretty much a sure thing. The SAC essentially asked Springstead to leave the conference last year in part to help make way for Pasco County's newest schools.

Though Springstead was one of the founding SAC members, the school is in Hernando County and, thus, was the only SAC member not in Pasco County. As Pasco has expanded, the SAC became a tight fit for a school not in the county. And the school district mandates county schools make it a priority to schedule games against each other.

Wesley Chapel was voted in last year, and with Mitchell's membership on the horizon, SAC board members strongly hinted to Springstead officials that it was time for the school to move on.

It did and soon joined Hernando and Citrus county schools in the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference.

Mooney and assistant principal Jim Michaels presented Mitchell's letter of application to the board Thursday, which unanimously voted to accept the school, and the two were welcomed onto the SAC's governing board. The Mustangs will compete in all varsity sports next year except football, which will play a junior varsity schedule. In other developments:

In softball, the 2001 SAC championship will actually be won on the field.

Because of expansion, the board offered coaches the chance to break up their sports into East and West divisions based on U.S. 41 in Land O'Lakes, with the division winners meeting in a championship game.

Only the softball coaches voted to accept this option. So Land O'Lakes, Pasco, Wesley Chapel and Zephyrhills have been placed into the East division while the West division will include Gulf, Hudson, Mitchell, Ridgewood and River Ridge.

The division winners will play after the regular season and before the district tournaments to decide the SAC title. The division runners-up will meet for the No. 3 and No. 4 spots. Each team will leave a date open on their schedules for the games.

The plan was proposed last year by Zephyrhills athletic director Craig Milburn. SAC secretary Keith Newton, Gulf's football coach, said if it proves a success in softball, coaches in other sports might vote to adopt the format.

"It's really a pretty good setup," Newton said. "It's based on the premise that your conference is so large and you can't play everybody twice. But the only one who wanted to take a shot at it were the softball coaches."

However, if the Florida High School Activities Association continues to place Pasco County teams in wide-open districts, where teams won't get the chance to play their SAC counterparts consistently, the new format won't be just be an option. It could be a requirement.

"After next year, we'll get redistricted. Everybody will," Newton said. "So we may find out that because of a new method of reclassification, we'll find out that everybody has to do that type of scheduling and decide the championship in that process."

The board voted to make an exception to the mandatory SAC schedule for Mitchell's girls basketball team.

The Mustangs' schedule was squeezed because the FHSAA placed the school in the far-flung eight-team Class 3A, District 8 next year with Hillsborough County teams Academy of the Holy Names, Berkeley Prep, Robinson and Tampa Catholic and Pinellas County schools Clearwater Central Catholic, Osceola and St. Petersburg Catholic.

Mitchell must play each school twice and would have been required to play each SAC school twice as well. But that would have meant 30 games, and the state-mandated limit is 28. So to meet that state limit, Mitchell asked for and was given permission to drop two to five SAC games.

That means the Mustangs will only play certain conference schools once during the 2000-01 season. If SAC teams play each other twice, the second game counts toward the conference standings.

"We haven't decided how we're going to approach it," Mooney said.

"The minimum will be two (games), and then, it's a possibility we might drop three more if we want to get into tournaments."

The SAC voted to officially adopt an oft-discussed proposal to hold a two-day conference wrestling tournament to decide the SAC crown and honors three weeks before districts.

The coaches voted to adopt the plan in March, and it became official with the SAC governing board's blessing. The plan was opposed by Pasco coach Mark DeAugustino when it was first proposed last year. He feared an increased chance of injury because teams would be wrestling eight teams in two days.

But a majority of his peers convinced their athletic directors and principals that the sport would be best helped by requiring all the members to decide the SAC championship in a weekend rather than having each school visit every other school for dual matches throughout the season.

Under the new format, each team will wrestle every other SAC team in the span of two days. But the teams would use only two of the state-maximum 20 weigh-ins to wrestle the other eight teams. The other weigh-ins would be freed up so county teams could squeeze in more tournaments during the season.

The SAC Coaches Golf Tournament will be June 3 at Silver Oaks in Zephyrhills. The fee is $15, and tee time is 8 a.m. The spring social luncheon will be held at 12:30 p.m., and the conference all-sports awards and spring coaching awards will be presented.

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