If you’re like me and are starting to recite lines from summertime TV fare like "Wizards on Deck with Hannah Montana," you really need to look forward to something.

Today’s start of prep football practice gives us something to look forward to. And not that I mind watching Hannah Montana hang out on a cruise ship with Zack and Cody (over and over and over), but there is so much more to look forward to as we count down to the start of 2009-10 prep sports year:

10. The Dave Anderson era at the WIAA. The WIAA’s new executive director officially began his new gig Aug. 1, but his leadership skills are being tested from the get-go. With proposals to shake up the state football and basketball tournaments open for discussion, some of the WIAA’s most influential constituents are no doubt looking forward to getting a good read on Anderson.

9. Football districts? A plan to scrap traditional conferences for football-only districts — as soon as 2010 — was clearly the most stunning idea to come out of the WIAA offices this summer, if only because it was so good.

Football needs a good overhaul in Wisconsin, and the proposal unveiled last month gives it that. I’m looking forward to discussion of the plan over the coming months because, from this angle, all that could sink it would be resistance to change.

8. Five divisions for WIAA basketball? WIAA associate director Deb Hauser spent her summer playing with the basketball tournament model at the request of the WIAA Board of Control.

We’ll find out soon the details of a plan that will get feedback at upcoming WIAA area meetings. We know that it calls for a fifth division, but any demographic criteria applied to private schools must be applied to public schools, and it looks like it can’t be applied to schools in Division 2 if it’s going to work.

7. WIAA girls basketball in the Kohl Center. The aging Dane County Coliseum tried hard to create for the girls a state tournament atmosphere like the Kohl Center the past four years, but I’m looking forward to the real deal — even if it’s March 25-27, a week after the boys tournament, and gives us a March weekend without a WIAA state tournament (March 11-13).

6. Any other tournament sites on the run? Not yet. But I’m looking forward to feedback to an Oct. 3 cross country meet at University Ridge — the Wisconsin Invitational, the second of three college meets this fall at the new Thomas Zimmer Championship Course and the one with a prep division.

5. Other tournament date changes. If you think playing the girls state tournament after the boys will take some getting used to, you’re in for a long 12 months. The state boys soccer tournament moves one week earlier in the fall (finishing on the same day as the state cross country meet) while the state girls soccer and softball tourneys move one week later in the spring (finishing two days after the state spring baseball tournament).

4. Softball sectionals are splitsville. With one more week in its season, softball will no longer jam two sectional semifinals and one sectional final into one day. Instead, semifinal games will be played on a Tuesday (June 8) at separate sites with the winners playing for the sectional title on a Friday (June 11).

3. A single season for baseball? Delegates at the WIAA annual meeting in April urged an end to the schism between spring and summer baseball, but the issue hasn’t advanced as quickly as plans to change the landscape in football and basketball. Look for that to change.

2. Major gym renovations at Middleton. Two years after everyone was buzzing about the new artificial turf stadium at Middleton High School, we can look forward to a new look to its gymnasium, which spent the summer getting a makeover.

Here’s hoping they were able to squeeze a few more seats into it. The WIAA has once again assigned the Division 1 boys basketball sectional final there, after the Dane County Coliseum proved to be too costly and UW-Madison is apparently still too stubborn to offer up the Field House for a sectional.

1. The halftime show. I’m looking forward to the first dance routine to Sean Kingston’s "Fire Burnin’ (On the Dance Floor)," but I’m guessing I’ll see a Michael Jackson medley first.

Contact Rob Hernandez at rhernandez@madison.com or 608-252-6173.