Farmington Prepares For Move To Class 5A Status

FARMINGTON -- Some things in life just can't be avoided, like death and taxes.

Farmington athletic director Brad Blew knew his school's move to Class 5A status was inevitable, and now that time has come. When school resumes in August, the growing Washington County school becomes one of three newcomers to the 5A-West Conference.

It's the fourth classification change Blew has experienced since he joined the school district, but he admits this switch is a much different one because of the dramatic change in landscape. Farmington has been so rooted in playing teams in Northwest Arkansas over the years, but now teams like Prairie Grove, Pea Ridge and Berryville have been replaced by Morrilton, Vilonia and Little Rock Christian on the school's conference athletic schedules.

"We knew it was coming, and it's going to be a big change for us," Blew said. "The league we are going into is one of the premier leagues in its classification.

"The bar has certainly been raised as far as a competition standpoint. It's going to force us to do things a lot differently."

This move almost took place during the 2012-2014 reclassification cycle, when Farmington's average attendance in grades 9-11 reached a three-year average of 480.67 students. That was good for No. 64 in the state, the cutoff for Class 5A schools, but successful appeals by Shiloh Christian and Pulaski Academy to move up in classification allowed Farmington to keep its Class 4A status for the past two years. Shiloh Christian will return to Class 4A this cycle.

That isn't the case this time as Farmington's average attendance for the 2014-2016 reclassification cycle climbed to 501.33 students, and the school moves up to the No. 60 spot in the state. De Queen and Morrilton are now tied as the smallest public schools in 5A ranks at a 494.67 average, while Monticello remains the largest Class 4A school at 485.67.

Huntsville made a similar move in 2010, but it drops back down to Class 4A status for the upcoming cycle. Blew doesn't foresee Farmington following that path.

"I think this is going to be a change that's going to last for a long time," Blew said. "I don't see us ever going back down to 4A.

"We loved that classification and had many great relationships with the teams we've played for the last several years. We hate to leave, but we're pretty excited about the challenges that are ahead of us."

Travel Tests And Costs

One of the biggest challenges Farmington faces as a 5A-West member is the increased amount of travel its teams must endure over the next two years, as well as how much it will affect its players in the classroom.

Farmington's travel distance -- particularly in basketball, where teams play a double round-robin schedule in league play -- will be almost four times greater than it was in the 4A-1 Conference. Its longest one-way trip in the 4A-1 was 73 miles to Ozark, while trips in the 5A-West range from 80 miles (Harrison) to 190 miles (Little Rock Christian).

"The travel is one of the things that looms the largest, as well as how you handle allowing your kids to be top-of-the-line student-athletes and going onto road trips four hours away," said girls basketball coach Brad Johnson, whose players are among those to take advanced placement classes. "I think there is a difficulty in that.

"Then you add on a new league, new teams and new coaches that you have to prepare for, night in and night out. There are so many challenges that we have to face. We tried to prepare our kids along the way so it wouldn't be a shock to them, but at the same time, the only way you can prepare for some of those challenges is through experience."

The 5A-West basketball schedules have been constructed in a way where Farmington's longest trips will take place on Friday nights, weather permitting. It still means students might have to leave class around lunch time to make the long trips to games that night, and they will have to catch up on any class work they may miss during that time.

Even the shorter trips to Clarksville, Harrison and Morrilton on Tuesday nights could take a toll on players who won't arrive home until late and go to class early the next morning. Johnson said that could even affect the way he holds practices on Wednesdays after a long night.

"Our typical Wednesday practice may look vastly different," he said. "Normally, a midweek practice for us, we did a lot of shooting and fundamentals, and we restructured the mistakes we made on Tuesday night. It was a good day to do basketball skill development in the middle of the season.

"Now the value of saving legs and giving kids time to prepare for their classes will become a priority. We'll still practice, but it will become a chance to get our legs back because Thursday will become game prep time."

Scheduling changes were abundant, especially among Farmington's junior high teams because the 5A-West doesn't have a conference for junior high teams. It caused Farmington to take the independent route, and Blew said he was tickled that the Cardinals will play a nine-game schedule this season.

It also changed how the basketball coaches structured their nonconference opponents. Farmington won't have to travel more than 50 miles for a nonconference game, and they opted out of the Citizens Bank Classic in Van Buren for tournaments closer to home -- the boys at Greenland and the girls at the Lady Bulldog Classic in Fayetteville.

"We did it, mostly because of travel," boys basketball coach Beau Thompson said. "We had a chance to play close to home, and we're not going to get to play close to home that much. We're trying to stay as local as we can in the nonconference games because we're going to put some miles on during the conference season.

"It was strictly a mileage deal. It's not that far off to Van Buren, but we have a chance to play five miles down the road and three games there. If it gets us off that bus a little more, it's going to be worth it."

The strain will be felt on the school's budget, as well. The additional mileage means more money spent on fuel, and Blew said the school will be providing a lot more meals for their players because of the long trips, which means more money.

He is confident he will get assistance from the school's boosters, which it will need more than ever before.

"Our travel will definitely be a school expense," Blew said. "We're fortunate here to have two booster clubs, and I'm sure they will assist greatly with feeding kids and stuff like that.

"We will be leaning on those support groups, and they have always been a luxury for us and our kids. Now they will be a necessity."

Playing With The Bigger Boys

One of the first things Farmington football coach Mike Adams did to prepare his team for the move to Class 5A came in November, after the Cardinals were eliminated from the Class 4A state playoffs. He sat down with the players that would return this fall and listed their new conference opponents on the weight room wall.

"We talked about the enrollment at each of the schools and where we fit into that," Adams said. "We see we're going to be at a deficit with most of those teams."

Adams said he had about 65 players participate in spring drills, which is "good numbers for us and for a 4A school." However, he knows Farmington will be playing teams that may sport 80-90 players on their rosters this fall, so quality depth will become an issue for the Cardinals.

Even with the departures of Alma and Shiloh Christian, both of whom made the playoffs last year, the 5A-West can still be a brutal, physical league. Morrilton won the state title last season after entering the playoffs as the league's second seed, while Greenbrier also made the playoffs.

To prepare for those types of battles, Farmington will close out its nonconference portion of its football schedule by playing Class 7A Van Buren.

"Football is a numbers game, so it will be tough for us," Adams said. "I watched Morrilton play in the state championship game, and we're going to have to change the way we do things and the way we look to compete with those guys.

"That has been our focus this offseason -- about commitment. We have to be committed to what we are doing. We had a much tougher offseason and required a lot more of our kids in the weight room, and we lost some kids because of it. We want as many numbers as we can, but more importantly, they have to committed to what we are doing."

Thompson, who had an earlier taste of the 5A-West when he was an assistant coach at Huntsville, also did his homework when it came to preparing for the 5A-West. He attended state tournament games when he could and kept in contact with coaches.

One of the things Thompson has stressed is there will be no second chances to reach the state tournaments for basketball, as well as baseball and softball. There are no district and regional tournaments in Class 5A, making what they do in league play even more critical.

"Every game now means so much more," Thompson said. "The preparation for a conference game is so much more concentrated in that league, and being able to defend your home court becomes so much more important because you play so far away from home.

"It's going to be impossible to get on a bus for 3 or 4 hours and expect to play well, so you have to defend your home floor every night in that league if you want to advance. It's going to be hard to ask our parents, a working parent that works until 5 o'clock, to go and watch a game in Vilonia on Tuesday night. We'll have to be able to deal with that."

Something else Farmington's coaches will have to deal with is the lack of no natural rivalries in the new league. It was not hard for players to get motivated when Farmington was playing teams like Prairie Grove, Lincoln and Gravette, but they may not act the same when they play Greenbrier or Harrison.

If that wasn't enough, those teams that have been in the league for a while will try their best not to allow the newcomers to enjoy any instant success in any sport. That is something Farmington's coaches will preach as their respective seasons draw nearer.

"As coaches, we have to remind them every day that our level of play will have to be good," Johnson said. "We don't want to just move into Class 5A; we want to move in and be a factor.

"Until we establish those natural rivalries, we'll have to go with the mindset that the bulls-eye is on our backs. We've already talked about this in our offseason, and we have to work with a chip on our shoulder because we are the new kids on the block. We have to have the mindset that we're going to get everybody's best shot."

A Little Catching Up To Do

One of the things Blew knew had to take place with the move to Class 5A was an update in Farmington's athletic facilities in order to keep up with schools in its new conference. Some of that has already taken place, while some remain on the horizon.

A new baseball field and an indoor baseball facility have already been completed, and Blew believes the school's new 1,800-seat gymnasium -- 1,600 of which will be chair-backs -- will be ready by Jan. 12. If it's on schedule, the first home basketball game will be Jan. 16 against Greenbrier.

"We are so excited because it's going to be a first-class facility," Blew said. "We think it's going to be special. We think it will be impressive for those in the Class 5A across the state, and that's the way we like to do things."

The next step will be a new football stadium, which will include a track, to replace Allen Holland Field, along with an indoor football facility. Blew believes that will come in the next three to four years, although there hasn't been a timetable set for that.

"That's what 5A schools have," Blew said. "We're not a small school any more, and these are some of the growing pains that go with it."

In the meantime, Farmington and Clarksville are the only two 5A-West schools whose football stadiums don't have artificial field turf. That is a switch from the 4A-1 Conference, where Pea Ridge, Shiloh Christian and Ozark are the only schools who had field turf.

"That will be a big change for us," Adams said. "We'll have to do something where we can go somewhere and get some practice time on turf, just to get used to it because that's what we'll be playing on mostly."