MOLINE, Ill. — The Illinois High School Association's (IHSA) yearly referendum passed 12 of the 14 amendment proposals, failing to approve the establishment of high school football districts.
In Proposal 18, the football districts would've been determined by the IHSA based on geography and classification, creating eight districts in each class with eight schools in each district. The top four schools in each district would qualify for the IHSA playoffs.
With the highest voting turnout in over a decade at 89.2% of members, the association approved terms for a girls flag football fall season, in addition to modifying tournament participation limits and out-of-season conditioning allowances.
With the passage of Proposal 23, the girls flag football fall season requirements include a season restriction between Monday of Week 6 to Saturday of Week 21, a pre-season requirement of nine practices before a contest and a regular season contest limitation of 25 games outside the IHSA State Series.
Here are the 11 other proposals that passed and the one other proposal that didn't pass:
- Proposal 4 (Passed): Allows coaches to conduct out-of-season strength and conditioning workouts with limits of no more than four days per week, and no more than 90 minutes per session outside the season. No coaching of the skills of a sport is allowed during any session.
- Proposal 5 (Passed): Allows students to attend the school their parent or guardian is a full-time staff member with if they reside outside the public school's attendance boundary. This is only allowed if the district has a board policy permitting students of employees to attend tuition-free.
- Proposal 9 (Passed): Modifies the All-Star games participation limit to include all sports, rather than just basketball, football, soccer and volleyball.
- Proposal 11 (Failed): Reduces the number of summer contact days restriction from 25 to 18 days.
- Proposal 12 (Passed): Allows coaches to conduct strength and conditioning workouts with limits of no more than four days per week and no more than 90 minutes per session during the summer contact days. Conditioning training does NOT count against the summer contact day count. No coaching of the skills of a sport during any session is allowed for the session to not count as a summer contact day.
- Proposal 14 (Passed): Restricts a pre-contest physical examination from determining a student's eligibility for a contest other than in sports that require weigh-ins or sport-specific nail or skin checks.
- Proposal 15 (Passed): Modifies the participation under an assumed name to match the language passed two years ago in by-law 3.090. This by-law states that students are only permitted to use the names on their legal documents or which they commonly use in school or social situations. If they are found to be competing under the name of another student or competitor, or any other name, their principal will immediately suspend the student from participation.
- Proposal 16 (Passed): Eliminates the IHSA Tournament Limitations by-law 5.004. This by-law states that athletic teams cannot participate in more than five different games, contests or matches during an interscholastic tournament.
- Proposal 17 (Passed): Allows football teams to conduct a pre-season scrimmage with another school with the following limitations:
- IHSA Officials must be used
- Four separate 12-play segments
- No special teams
- 48 total play limits per player
- No live contact or thud in practice the day before or after the scrimmage
- Scrimmage must be held on the Friday or Saturday of IHSA Week 7
- Players are eligible to participate in the scrimmage after participating in eight different days of practice.
- Proposal 19 (Passed): Eliminates the boys gymnastics season and contest limitation by-law 5.090, which limited interscholastic contests to between Monday of Week 33 and Saturday of Week 47. It also limited teams and individuals from participating in more than 15 contest dates outside of the IHSA series.
- Proposal 20 (Passed): Eliminates the match limit per tournament language in girls and boys volleyball, which limited teams to five matches per tournament.
- Proposal 22 (Passed): Increases the number of girls wrestling team contests from 18 to 25.
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