CCSN's sports plan jumps hurdle

A proposal to bring sports to the Community College of Southern Nevada remains alive.

At a meeting this morning of the college's Intercollegiate Athletics Study Committee, members worked on the proposal's wording, which they hope to finish at the committee's meeting on Wednesday.

"We are looking at the wording of the important conclusions and recommendations that this group has come up with to submit to the Board of Regents," said committee chairman John O'Reilly during this morning's meeting at the college's West Charleston Campus.

O'Reilly and the committee dissected the wording of the first draft of the 84-page report, tweaking sentences and words to put the report in order.

The group is scheduled to finish revising the report Wednesday and to present it to the Board of Regents at the board's Sept. 24-25 meeting in Las Vegas.

The feasibility report touches on a wide variety of areas, including providing Nevada high school students a way to continue competing in athletics, bringing in community support for athletics, locating adequate athletic facilities and determining the cost of starting the program.

"I want to applaud this group because they are going in the right direction," said Tom Hawkins, International Studies Advisor at the community college. "I was a teacher in California, where there are over 100 community colleges, and 96 of those had athletics programs.

"In California those schools had to fight for high school athletes, but here the community college has over 20 high schools to draw from. If you want to talk about bringing the community together, then this is the way to do it."

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