PIERRE - The South Dakota High School Activities Association board of directors approved a motion Wednesday to delay the start of soccer as a state-sanctioned sport indefinitely after the majority of Class AA schools expressed concerns with funding and scheduling. The issue will reappear on the board's agenda at future meetings.

As the result of a motion made and approved at a previous meeting, soccer was set to begin during the 2010-2011 school year as a sanctioned sport governed by the rules of the SDHSAA, but after a request from the Greater Dakota and Eastern South Dakota conferences, which represent the 16 AA schools in the state, the board made the decision to revisit the subject.

SDHSAA assistant executive director Bob Lowery began the discussion by outlining the options in front of the board, ranging from rescinding soccer as a sanctioned sport all together to moving forward with no change to the schedule.

"At this point, 2010-2011 is not that far off," Lowery said. "And at this point, we don't know who is adding soccer and who is not."

Several school superintendents in attendance expressed the desire to rescind the sanctioning of soccer all together.

"We need to start this process over again," said Watertown superintendent Dr. Lesli Hanson. "We didn't have the time to go through the steps we normally would to alert the community, gather feedback and then explore the logistics. We didn't even know the decision was being made in the first place."

The GDC and ESD conferences requested the board revisit the subject of sanctioning soccer because of funding, budgeting and scheduling concerns.

"None of us are against soccer; it's just that the timing is bad," Yankton athletic director Bob Winter said.

But that argument didn't hold as much stock with SDHSAA directors and board members.

"To me that's not even a good reason, because funding, budgeting and scheduling are always going to be an issue," SDHSAA executive director Wayne Carney said. "Maybe with these economic times things are a little different … but we need to be careful when we make that statement."

School administrators agreed that budget cuts in other areas, or the need for tax opt-outs, were hard to justify to the public when all people see is another sport that is being added to the school's extracurricular programming.

"I'm still not sold on rescinding the decision to sanction soccer all together," said SDHSAA board member Bob Sittig. "It's a sad state when we're the only state that doesn't sanction soccer, and we think we can't afford to do so."

All the other states sanction soccer and recognize it as a school sport at the varsity level, though surrounding states have different schedules as far as whether it is played in the fall or the spring.

The SDHSAA had originally ruled the boys would play in the fall and girls would play in the spring but will likely reconsider that issue after making the decision to delay the start of soccer as a sanctioned sport. As it stands for communities currently fielding club teams in accordance with the South Dakota Soccer Association, both boys and girls play in the fall.

Concerns surrounding the girls playing in the spring range from the field and facility wear and conditions, to conflicts with other sports such as track and field.

"Maybe we rushed to sanction soccer. Maybe we rushed to set the seasons," Sittig said. "I don't think we should rush to rescind it."

Sittig made the motion to delay the start of soccer as a sanctioned sport in order to receive more input before continuing the discussion at the board's January meeting. He also included in his motion, which passed unanimously, an intent by the board to take some sort of action regarding the issue at the March meeting.

"I think we're all in agreement this maybe needs some further study," said board member Chris Specht.