Nebraska school basketball courts receive an upgrade

PONCA, Nebraska (KCAU)– Basketball shot clocks can cost Nebraska schools thousands of dollars, but Ponca Public Schools said they budgeted for this expense in advance.

“A shot clock is a device that you have 35 seconds to shoot the basketball and hit the rim,” Ponca girls’ basketball coach Bob Hayes said. “If it hits the rim, the shot clock resets, and you have another 35 seconds if you get the offensive rebound, so basically it times your possession.”

About three years ago, the National Federation of State High School Associations opened the door for states to implement shot clocks into high school basketball. The Nebraska School Activities Association saw the demand in their state and began allowing Class A schools, then Class B, and most recently Class C and D to set up the clocks.

“We notified our schools in January that this is something that could potentially happen in April, and obviously it did happen,” Jon Dolliver with the Nebraska School Activities Association said. “My hope is that our schools had a jump start on communicating with shot clock manufacturers and scoreboard manufacturers so they could get those in their schools.”

A month ago, Ponca Public Schools did exactly that, purchasing and mounting a shot clock in their court.

“Well, we wanted to get in kind of ahead of the rush to get it in,” superintendent Brendan Calahan said. “You know, if you wait too long, you get into the summer, your install times get pushed back several months, inventory can drop. So knowing it was coming down the pipe, we were prepped for it and ready.”

The clock wasn’t cheap, costing the school district roughly $9,500 for two of them. However, Ponca Public Schools officials knew that ahead of the purchase and made room in the budget in advance.

“What we’re doing with our athletics money, and different purchases that we’ve made, and maybe some upgrades that we put on hold in some other areas, [being] pretty intentional about what we’re doing with all incoming money,” Calahan said.

While Ponca hasn’t finished setting up their shot clock, they have played on other basketball courts that do, and officials are excited to finally have this technology at home.

“I got to watch a lot of basketball games this year that utilized shot clock, and you don’t realize what it did until you watch a game that didn’t have it,” Dolliver said.

“If I ran into somebody who’s just going to stall the game out, that solves a lot of problems, because people don’t come to the game wanting to see somebody hold the ball,” Hayes said. “It doesn’t affect too much of the game until the end of quarter, end of half into the game and then you get into the situation where maybe you’re behind and the other team has the ball. Do you foul, or do you play out the shot clock and try and make a stop and get the ball back that way?”

Class C and D Nebraska schools have until the beginning of the coming basketball season in November to purchase and set up their shot clock.

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