The N.C. High School Athletic Association will seed its boys' and girls' basketball tournament this season using a pod system similar to the system used during the football playoffs this year.

The NCHSAA Board of Directors in its winter meeting in Chapel Hill on Thursday approved a motion to seed the basketball playoffs by a 19-1 vote after receiving a request from the N.C. Basketball Coaches Association.

Sixty-four teams in each of the association's four classifications will advance according to their conference finish, just as they do now. The teams will be divided into East and West regions and will be seeded first by conference finish and then by overall record. No team that finishes second in its conference can be seeded higher than any conference champion.

The tournament also will be aligned into four geographical pods - East, Mideast, Midwest and West.

The board approved the seeding on a one-year trial basis.

The NCHSAA board discussed the football pod system, which was used for the second time this year.

Davis Whitfield, the NCHSAA Commissioner, said he knew many football coaches did not like the pod system because it sometimes created regular-season rematches and clustered top teams in the same pod. "But I think administrators believe the pod system is doing what it is designed to do, which is reduce travel for our teams and our spectators," he said.

The football playoffs were tweaked, however. A team that plays 11 games will be allowed to drop any one game from the record reported for the seeding process. In the recent playoffs, teams could only drop the results of an endowment game.

Other issues

The board also voted to increase catastrophic insurance coverage from $1 million to $2 million. The premium for athletes is expected to remain $3.75 per athlete.

The most discussed item of the day was requiring non-faculty coaches to complete the National Federation of State Association's "Fundamentals of Coaching" course before practicing with a team.

The board discussed whether school employees who are not teachers - janitors, assistants, specialists and bus drivers, for example - should be considered non-faculty.

The board eventually voted to send the motion back to the Review/ Officiating Committee and asked a motion be brought back to the board at the spring meeting in May. Before the motion was tabled, a straw vote of the board was 17-3 to require all coaches to pass the course.

The board also tabled a motion to have a separate classification for 3A indoor track. There currently are state championships in 4A and a combined championship in 1A/2A/3A.