Farmington Not Enticed By Blended Conferences, Formation Of 'Districts'

It's a season of change for Farmington basketball coaches Beau Thompson and Brad Johnson as they prepare their respective teams for life in the new 5A-West Conference and games against schools with bigger enrollments.

The task could be an even bigger one if a proposal is passed during the Arkansas Activities Association's annual meeting with the governing body Wednesday in Little Rock. Farmington could find itself in a "district" that includes current Class 6A teams such as Greenwood, Alma and Russellville when the 2016-17 season arrives.

It would mean shorter trips for Farmington, but that's not enough to entice Thompson, Johnson or even school athletic director Brad Blew -- all of whom voiced their disapproval over the measure.

"We're really not for it," Thompson said. "As far as travel, we might be better off under this proposal, but we could easily be picking up schools that are twice our size. I just don't see that as a plus since we're now one of the smallest schools in Class 5A and would have to play Class 6A schools."

The proposal is the AAA's latest attempt to help schools deal with difficult travel issues like Farmington, whose shortest trip for a conference game over the next two years will be 80 one-way miles to Harrison. It will combine Class 6A and 5A schools -- as well as Class 4A with 3A schools and Class 2A with 1A schools -- then form districts out of these combined classes to help shorten trips.

While the proposal appears to be a nightmare for Farmington, it could be a dream come true for Siloam Springs, who has already endured two years as the lone Class 6A school in a conference with mammoth sized 7A schools. Now it will go through the next two years as a member of the 7A/6A-Central, which means long trips to play such Class 7A schools as Little Rock Catholic, Bryant and Conway.

Done By Committee

AAA executive director Lance Taylor said the proposal was the result of a travel committee that was formed right after the 2013 governing body. The committee consisted of 14 school superintendents -- two from every classification -- and during the first committee meeting, each superintendent has his idea on how to deal with travel.

Each of them focused on what was best for their respective school, which led to another three-hour meeting to hash things out. It was a question by Taylor to the superintendents that finally put things in motion.

"I asked this question: What is most important for the students, the athletic programs and the community?" Taylor said.

The superintendents' answers included items such as testing, travel, time loss from classes, academics, the inability of parents to leave work early in order to see their children or even see them play at all, expenditures and concerns with long travel to games, particularly on nights when students had to go to school the following day. When Taylor asked the superintendents what the least important matter was, the answer was simply winning and losing.

That then led to Taylor's next question.

"I asked them 'Now we have decided on what's the most important and what's the least important, is there a way we can have them both?" Taylor said.

That led to the proposal for the blended classifications and calls for the formation of districts, which will be used in basketball, baseball, softball, volleyball and soccer. The guidelines call for teams to play a double round-robin district schedule, then return to their respective classifications for a conference tournament to see which schools would go on further in postseason play, whether it be regional tournaments for smaller schools or straight to state tournament for larger schools.

The combination of classes means there would be 48 schools in the Class 6A/5A districts, 103 schools in Class 4A/3A districts and 123 schools in Class 2A/1A districts. Each district would have between 6 and 10 teams, depending on location and travel situation.

Taylor, however, said the districts wouldn't be drawn out until after the AAA receives the schools' attendance numbers and determine which schools go in what classifications -- something that may not take place until next year.

"That means there are cards that haven't been dealt yet," Blew said. "In any proposal like this, there are winners and there are losers. I think we would be a big loser in this situation, and it's a tough sell right now for us. We could get a few games closer to home, but if we're put in a district with Mountain Home, we'll have just as much travel as we do now.

"We're one of the smaller Class 5A schools with 500 students in grades 9-11, and we could end up in a district with a school like Russellville, which has 1,150. That's a big deficit. That will cause some choppy waters, and it will be a tall order for us."

A Class By Itself

Some Class 7A schools have had their share of blended conferences since 2010, when they were combined with Class 6A schools to cut down on travel. While the six Class 7A schools in Northwest Arkansas only experienced it for the last two years with Siloam Springs, those in Central Arkansas have done it since 2010 and will continue to do for the next two years.

That will not be the case if this proposal passes. When the 2016-17 school year begins, the 17 schools in Class 7A will be split into two conferences by themselves and will not play in any of these blended districts.

"The two Class 7A superintendents that were on the travel committee said that the Class 7A schools would rather play 7A schools," Taylor said.

How Class 7A schools become affected by the proposal is how the teams could be split into the conferences for those sports that play the double round-robin schedule. It allows for more flexibility in the number of teams will play in each conference, where one could have nine teams and one could have only seven.

That raises a concern to Rogers athletic director Mark Holderbaum. While schools in the nine-team conference will have an easier time filling their respective athletic schedules, those in the seven-team conference will have the advantage with a better chance to reach the postseason -- especially since state playoffs and tournaments will be cut down to the top four teams in each conference instead of the six that has reached since 2008.

"I don't think that provides equity," Holderbaum said. "While it may address geographic areas, I think when it comes to the number of teams competing for playoff spots, I think everybody would ultimately like the same chance.

"Instead of wanting to be in the conference with nine schools, I think teams would want to be in the conference with seven schools because their chances will be a little bit better. That's the one part that I hope has more discussion before it actually gets implemented."

The landscape of Class 7A will undergo some significant changes when the proposal comes into effect because the new Bentonville West opens at the same time. Bentonville athletic director Scott Passmore said plans are in the works to open West to begin competing as a Class 7A school, and if so, it would likely bump West Memphis -- the only current 7A school east of Pulaski County -- down to Class 6A, cutting a huge portion out of the travel.

It will give Northwest Arkansas seven Class 7A schools, while Central Arkansas will have six. That means Fort Smith Northside, Fort Smith Southside and Van Buren are in a precarious position: will all of them head east to form a nine-team conference with the Central Arkansas schools, or will they jockey to become one or two schools that could head north to join the seven area schools?

"We are back in the 7A-West now, and that's a big advantage as far as travel is concerned," Fort Smith athletic director Jim Rowland said. "It's a better financial situation because those teams' fans will travel better, and our biggest conference trip will be just to Bentonville, which isn't over an hour and 20 minutes long.

"The AAA has some tough decisions to make on it. This is something that takes place every two years, when what a lot of people would want is a 10-year cycle with no changes."

Football Stands Alone

The one sport that won't be affected much is football, largely because the travel committee made its most progress on the proposal after football was taken out of the picture.

"Everything become a lot easier once we took out football," Taylor said. "Football is a manpower sport and relies largely on numbers. A good example was Siloam Springs, which was the only 6A school in a conference with seven 7A schools."

"Schools will still have some trips to make, but football is only played on Friday nights. I've told schools to work it out where they wouldn't have all their long road trips in one year. That way, some schools may still have their classes disrupted on Fridays, but maybe it will happen only two or three times out of the five road games schools normally have."

The proposal, however, does make some changes in football. One of them will split Class 7A and Class 6A schools and put them in separate conferences for the first time since the 2010 season.

Taylor said those two classes, as well as Classes 3A through 5A, will still consist of eight-team conferences inside of them in order to avoid open dates in the middle of conference play. That will lead to an increase of travel for Siloam Springs, no matter how the Class 6A split takes place.

The Panthers could face long trips to Texarkana under an east-west split, or journeys to West Memphis, Marion and Jonesboro with a north-south split. However, that is something athletic director Kevin Downing said he could tolerate in order for Siloam Springs to play teams in the same classification.

"I think we're going in the right direction," Downing said. "In order to play schools more our size and have a more competitive balance, I think we can go with the travel aspect.

"The travel issue makes it difficult, but if there was one sport to pick for it, it would have to be football since it's played once a week. We may have three long trips, but I think we can handle it."

Another significant change involves Class 2A schools. They will be split into six conferences, and each conference will have no less than five teams and no more than 10 teams in them instead of the standard eight teams other classes will have.

Teams inside any small conference will like their chances of a playoff berth since the top five teams in each conference advance to the postseason. What they may not like is trying to fill their schedules.

"It's going to come down to the luck of the draw," Hector coach Mark Taylor said. "If you're in a six-team conference and trying to look for a nonconference game for Week 6, it may be almost impossible if nobody else has the same open date, or you may have to go a long way to play one.

"It could get even harder if you have some schools that have to shut down football programs because of low numbers. Meanwhile, those teams in 10-team conferences would be left with one nonconference game, and I'm afraid that might break some traditional nonconference rivalry games, like Rison and Fordyce."

Sports like track, swimming, golf, tennis and wrestling aren't affected by the proposal because they aren't required to play conference schedules and use a conference tournament or a meet to qualify athletes for state tournaments or meets.

Sports on 08/03/2014