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Show Spotlight on Sporis By Don Robinson High school coaches are being asked to vote for or against some rather drastic rule changes this year that are designed to cut down on the number of knee injuries on the gridiron. The one being the most controversary would prohibit blocking below the waist in downfield blocking. That may sound strange, but apparently statistics sta-tistics show this area of football to be the cause of most knee injuries. It seems that the officials would have a . tough time with the rule change. A blocker might well intend to hit high, but when players are moving down-field down-field it is hard to judge speed and distance. Another change would prohibit cross-body blocking. Both proposals pro-posals are meeting opposition as might be expected. Relative to rule changes officials have now ruled - that the bottom of the basketball bankboards must have protective padding. It seems the new crop of bigger kids are injuring hands and arms in collision with bottoms and corners of the boards. Another change this year makes it a technical foul to "dunk" the ball in practice. One foul for every time the ball is dunked. Too many bankboards have been coming apart from the dunk shots. I'd like to suggest another rule change. Schools should be required to pad dangerous projections and surfaces where players might come in contact with them. It's amazing how many gyms are designed with dangerous under-the-basket projections. Moab, this year, has had four injuries in three games from such situations. Dan Robinson and Paul Cox hit the corner of a wall at Emery Em-ery with Robinson ending up in the hospital and Cox re-injuring a damaged knee. Saturday, junior Lenny Walterschied, suffered a concussion when he hit the wall at Montrose. Robinson also banged up a knee against the wall in the varsity game. ; Moab is playing one of the toughest pre-season schedules sche-dules it has had in years. It won't get any easier in the next two games. Emery and Millard are perennial top ten teams in Utah. Montrose, Colorado is a tripple A school as is Durango. Durango waxed host school Cannon Can-non City last Friday, and is supposed to be one of the best in Colorado. Valley High of Utah, Moab's next home game has won two straight. It might be advantageous to Moab to meet the toughies early considering the Devils relative inexperience. When league play opens they face mighty San Juan. The Broncos Friday, clobbered Cortez 94-80 in a waltz after stomping Emery by about the same margin. Suggestions are already coming forth on how to change the Utah high school classification system. The latest does not sit well here. It would call for increasing the A school list by including all schools with enrollments enroll-ments of 1,000 or less. That would put schools like Carbon, Car-bon, American Fork, Spanish Fork and half a dozen others in class A. It would also leave the smaller A schools out in the cold even more than they are now. Payson and Judge Memorial have a lock-up on title games since the new system began and such a move would only mean a few more big schools having a shot at what is already a monopoly of the big schools. Why not drop a few schools down to the B level ? As it stands now a B school winning one football game can make the playoffs because be-cause there are so few B schools with football teams. Moab is stuck in the A division regardless of such a change, but schools like North Summitt (enrollment 249) wouldn't be hung with playing Logan (enrollment 941). |