photo by: Conner Becker/Journal-World

A shot clock sits idle during warmups at the Shotclock Showdown on Saturday morning at Mill Valley High School in Shawnee, Kansas. Coaches and officials alike say it's time for a change.

High school basketball coaches want more action.

That’s the message 12 Kansas high schools promoted at the first-ever Shot Clock Showdown on Saturday at Mill Valley High School in Shawnee. Schools ranged from Class 6A-4A.

The two-day tournament, organized by Mill Valley head girls basketball coach Adam Runyan, saw players and officials experiment with a 35-second shot clock.

The objective: advancing the pace of play by removing the scenario where the ball is being held to drain the clock.

“It’s within the rules, and everybody does it,” Runyan said. “Last four minutes of the game and a team gets the lead — they’re holding the ball. It’s the idea of creating a situation where people have to play and it’s not a held-ball situation the last three or four minutes.”

Lawrence High head girls basketball coach Jeff Dickson had Saturday’s tournament circled on his calendar for a while.

Dickson, whose girls are traveling up and down the Midwest competing against other high school programs, wants his team to earn every minute they’re on the floor. Even if the clocks are a small of piece of the puzzle when it comes to pushing his players, the longtime LHS coach is all for it.

“We need people to step up and fight for new roles and attack those roles with confidence,” Dickson said during a practice leading up to the tournament. “That’s an area we need to work on and we’ll grow in that area. That’s a bigger adjustment than I think some of them realize.”

A desired increase in competition led to 35-second shot clocks being adopted by nearby states Nebraska and Iowa this past season, the first allowed under a green light from the National Federation of State High School Associations.

Saturday’s girls basketball tournament was a true pilot for the shot clocks, which were installed at Mill Valley two years ago in anticipation of their adoption at the state level. That hasn’t happened quite yet, but the wheels are seemingly in motion.

John Dehan, owner of Call the Game, an organization that assigns officials to high schools across northeast Kansas, utilized the tournament as a clinic for officials to adapt and gain experience working with the addition of shot clocks.

Dehan said he expects the Kansas Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association to begin recommending shot clocks to the Kansas State High School Activities Association as soon as 2025.

photo by: Conner Becker/Journal-World

John Dehan, owner of Call the Game, brought a fleet of high school officials to Mill Valley High School for the first-ever shot clock-focused tournament. Dehan said the addition of shot clocks is a non-negotiable when it comes to the future of high school basketball.

But the change doesn’t end on the court.

Two glaring obstacles for schools are the financial and personnel burdens required to add shot clocks. That process begins with whether or not a high school can accommodate the technology, which can become tricky depending on what clock system a school uses.

Schools with recently updated scoreboards and backboards are at an advantage when it comes to seamless installation, Bob Kernell, the region’s Daktronics electronics sales consultant, and a former high school administrator at Liberty High School in Missouri, told the Journal-World.

A basic shot clock system — including two digital clocks, wireless receivers, an operator’s console, and a handheld start/stop switch — can stick schools with a bill as high as $7,000 after installation.

Schools would presumably be tasked with staffing gymnasiums to operate and maintain usage of the shot clocks throughout every game, varsity or not. That means more weeknight shifts and another seat at the scorer’s table.

Coaches, players and officials can discuss the logistics in the meantime, but as far as this group is concerned, it’s safe to say Kansas high schools are on the clock.