Coaches, ADs can decide how many games teams play.  John Harder has some work to do. Southeast’s venerable girls basketball coach has to find five teams to fill his schedule. Then he needs to know if the three teams that pulled out of his annual holiday tournament, the Willie Clemons Classic, will ask back in now that the Florida High School Athletic Association won’t be paring back the prep schedules.

This could have been done back in April. But that was when the association’s board of directors, in an attempt to lessen the financial burdens of the state’s athletic programs, voted to trim varsity schedules by 20 percent and subvarsity schedules by 40 percent.

As reported by The Herald on Thursday, the board of directors voted Wednesday to rescind the reductions in the face of litigation from a gender equity group alleging the cuts — which excluded football and competitive cheerleading — violated Title IX and discriminated against female student athletes.

The two sides may now be nearing an agreement. Nancy Hogshead-Makar, one of the attorneys representing the six parents of female athletes who have filed suit against the FHSAA, said an injunction hearing scheduled for this morning in Jacksonville has been postponed, and the sides will try to settle by July 31.

Hogshead-Makar said the plantiffs are looking for a declaratory judgment, which would state the scheduling cuts violated gender-equity laws, so school districts in the state won’t try and make similar cuts.

Now that the cuts have been rescinded, coaches such as Harder have a choice, which was all they wanted in the first place. It’s extra work Harder doesn’t mind doing.

“There’s more kids that could have benefitted from how the schedules that they had,” he said, “than (by) the change.”

Such was the initial bone of contention among area coaches — instead of giving each school a chance to dictate how many games they could play, the FHSAA’s board of directors did the work themselves.

Similar to last season, basketball teams can now play up to 25 games. Had the reductions stuck, they would have been limited to 20.

Twenty-five, however, is the maximum — teams need to play a minimum of four contests to be eligible for postseason play, and the only games that count toward state series competition are those against district opponents.

Bayshore athletic director Chris Brady said he doesn’t plan on filling the schedule with faraway teams that draw little or result in a long bus trip. That said, the additional games could help Brady add county rivals the Bruins lost because of the reductions as well as the district realignments.

“When you’re playing a local team ... you’re going to get more gate,” he said. “It’s nice to get those games back if we can work it out.”

Because of the effect the overlap of sports seasons has on its low enrollment, Bradenton Christian has only had three varsity teams — girls and boys basketball and volleyball — play its maximum slate of games in the past. Athletic director Drew Mitchell said it is up to the school’s superintendent, Dan van der Kooy, if those teams will reach the maximum this season.

Mitchell, for one, is for it. For one, boys basketball, which takes in an average of $500 per home game, is Bradenton Christian’s big money maker. However, the main reason, Mitchell said, is the addional games get players more ready for the playoffs.

“It better prepares our kids for the postseason,” Mitchell said. “The more experienced they are, the more ready they are going to be.”

Some questions do remain. Paul Maechtle, Southeast’s athletic director, said now that the reductions have been taken off the table, some of his teams may be able to put some natural rivals back on their schedules, and it may be easier to fill up the Willie Clemons Classic as well as a volleyball tournament the school was hoping to host.

But Maechtle knows that is contingent on other athletic directors and coaches choosing to play a full slate of games, and hoping each school’s open dates align.

And not everyone is in favor with schools playing more or less than their counterparts.

“Now, it’s just going to be a free-for-all,” said Tim Wilder, a member of the board of directors and the superintendent of Gulf County. “We go back to the maximum games ... and some districts cannot do it, and some districts won’t do it.”

The FHSAA released its tentative realignments Thursday for softball and baseball. For more, go to Bradenton.com/sports.