It's hard to write a column about ushering in a bright and shiny new fall sports season in Sudbury region high schools when the heat sends perspiration rolling down your face!

Nonetheless, sports such as girls' basketball, boys' volleyball, boys' junior soccer, coed cross country running and relays, coed golf, girls' flag football and boys' varsity football are set to open their seasons as early as next Tuesday, September 14th.

Sport committee coaches and conveners met on Tuesday night to discuss changes to playing regulations made at least year's post season meetings, as well as to finalize schedules, and the boys' volleyball group led the charge insofar as game innovations are concerned.

Earlier in the year, Volleyball Canada accepted a number of rather significant changes to the rules of the game, some of which were subsequently adopted by O.F.S.A.A. Chief among these changes was the new rally point scoring system, quite a radical change from the system that was in place last year.

In the past, points could only be earned off the serve - your team could only collect a point if the rally was won at the time you were serving. Now, with the "rally point system", each rally wins a point, regardless of who was serving at the time the rally was won. In like manner, previously games consisted of a best of five series, 15-point games. Now, the first four games are to consist of 25 points, with the fifth, if necessary, to be played to 15 points.

Should prove to be quite an interesting innovation in high school volleyball this fall!

Still on the new, the S.D.S.S.A.A. is now featured on the World Wide Web. Updated on a weekly basis, the site features information on constitutional items, sport committee playing regulations and championship records, tournament information, policies, guidelines, historical information and just about everything else that might interest you about high school sports. Look to this site as well for a weekly preview of games, athlete bios, team sport standings, tournament information and event results. Hosted as part of the Rainbow District School Board web site, the address is: www.rainbow.edu.on.ca/sdssaa.

By the way, if you have information about any of the past championship information that may be missing in the championship records section, don't hesitate to email the information to me at the address listed on the site - you may have what we're looking for!

And I'll close my inaugural edition of "high school sports" this week with an item that I'll probably close with many times this year - S.D.S.S.A.A.'s quadrupal O.F.S.A.A. effort in the year 2000.

The four O.F.S.A.A. Committee Co-Chairs have met a few times over the summer to discuss various ways to handle some organizational issues collectively, an attempt to reduce the duplication of effort that is bound to result from four committees going about their separate ways. The four groups, led by chairs Linda MacKenzie (girls' soccer), Clyde and Gundi Sheppard (badminton), Mary Waddell (nordic ski) and Bob Deeth along with yours truly (boys' hockey), will be releasing the results of these deliberations very shortly.

And for items such as program advertising and sponsorship, they certainly hope they can count, once again, on the generous support that the Sudbury business community has offered in the past for such events.

I'll be talking more about this to you about this issue very soon. Don't forget to log on to the S.D.S.S.A.A. site and to all you high school athletes and coaches out there - have a great year!

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