SPRINGDALE — The landscape of high school athletics in Arkansas is once again on the verge of shifting, with some schools moving up in classification and others taking a step down.
How significant the changes will be, however, won't be determined for a few more months. Every two years the state's governing body realigns the state's schools, but the upcoming changes for the 2012-14 cycle promise to be significant.
First, votes must be taken, school administrators must consider different proposals and the Arkansas Activities Association must sort through all the paperwork before a decision can be reached in early August.
AT A GLANCE
Three Proposals To Consider
Under the current Arkansas Activities Association classification stucture, Class 6A and 7A schools compete against each other and a points system determines the field for the 6A postseason. But the AAA will vote on at least three proposals this summer that, if OK'd, will affect the state's two largest classifications. Those proposals are:
Springdale Har-Ber's Proposal
Main point: Eliminate 7A and instead expand 6A from 16 teams to the state's largest 32 schools.
Siloam Springs' Proposal
Main point: Keep 7A for the state's largest 16 schools, but expand 6A to the next 32 schools.
Pine Bluff's Proposal
Main point: Keep 6A and 7A as they are now for football only, but group the state's largest 32 schools together for other sports.
When all the meetings are done and the dust settles, Siloam Springs will be playing in a larger classification in 2012 and there's a good chance Shiloh Christian could move up at least two classes ahead of where its enrollment places it.
"We kind of do this about every two years," Lance Taylor, the AAA's Executive Director, said of the reclassification. "It all starts over again."
Siloam Springs moving up in classification is a certainty after the AAA released its latest enrollment figures on Friday. Enrollment numbers are released every two years, and the AAA uses the data to determine the classification for public and private schools throughout the state.
As expected, Siloam Springs ranks amongst the 32 largest schools in the state with around 853 students. The 16 largest schools in the state comprise 7A, and the next 16 largest schools make up 6A under the present classification plan.
As the classification system stands now, Siloam Springs -- which has the 29th-largest enrollment in the state -- will move from 5A to 6A in the fall of 2012. Greenwood, another longtime Class 5A school, will also move to 6A, while Van Buren will return to 7A after a tumultuous stint in 6A that involved a lawsuit against the AAA.
"Four years ago we began to anticipate that this (move to 6A) was going to happen. We've been very close for the last two cycles," said Siloam Springs athletic director Kerwin Dees. "And we began to look at this and knew that there were extreme difficulties no matter what scenario was chosen by the AAA."
Because of several proposals presented lately to the AAA about changing the classification structure, it remains to be seen what 6A will look like when Siloam Springs moves up in a little more than year.
The Panthers are facing the possibility of having to either travel far distances for conference games or compete in a revised version of the 7A-West Conference and play schools with enrollments three times its size.
"With Siloam, if they did move up by the (enrollment) numbers ... then they'd be the furthest (6A) team away in this area because this year it was Van Buren," Taylor said. "And so now you add another hour and a half to the trip and now it's going to be even further for the other 6A schools to travel to them. So I think that's also a concern."
School administrators from different parts of the state have recently presented three proposals that would dramatically alter the state's two largest classifications and affect Siloam Springs in particular.
The current system is a convoluted one that has 6A and 7A teams competing against one another during the regular season and then a complex point system determining the 6A postseason bracket.
It's such a mess that Van Buren filed a lawsuit. The school claimed it was at a disadvantage being a 6A school competing in a conference made up mostly of larger 7A schools.
A proposal presented last week by Springdale Har-Ber Principal Danny Brackett would eliminate 7A and instead put the state's largest 32 teams into an enlarged 6A, a format the state used for many years until 2006.
Siloam Springs officials presented another proposal that would keep the state's 16 largest schools in 7A, but enlarge the 6A from 16 schools to 32. The goal, Siloam Springs officials said, would be to reduce travel issues and avoid 6A teams having to compete in conferences with 7A schools.
All eight schools in the 7A-West have enrollments high enough to be ranked amongst the top 13 largest schools in the state. Bentonville is the state's largest school with 2,591 students, and Springdale High is not far behind with 2,066 students.
"Football is a huge manpower sport," Dees said. "And to think about us playing the range all the way up to Bentonville -- that's nearly three times bigger than us and still growing at a faster rate -- even if they split (into two schools) we'd never catch them."
And with fuel prices approaching $4 a gallon, the travel costs for Siloam Springs would increase significantly if its non-football teams had to travel even farther to play conference games several times a week.
Several years ago, Dees estimated a move to 6A would result in Siloam Springs traveling 3,800 miles round-trip for seven conference games instead of the roughly 2,100 miles it travels as a 5A school. The Siloam Springs plan would also bring present 5A-West Conference schools Alma, Greenbrier and Vilonia up to 6A as well.
At least one another proposal the AAA will consider this summer would keep 6A and 7A as they are now for football only. Taylor said the AAA's governing board will vote on the proposals in early August.
"I'm glad we don't get to vote next week," Taylor said. "(School administrators) get to look at it for three or four months and see how it's going to actually affect them."