Why have a rule in place if the people who regulate the rules decide not to put it to use?
It's a question I ask after a story I wrote earlier this month on the mixed-conference districts that will be utilized this season in basketball, baseball and softball, thanks to the passage of Proposal No. 4 two years ago. Schools have been placed in districts and will play those schools during the regular season, then go back to their respective conferences for postseason play.
The story also listed West Fork's plight because of this new district play format. West Fork -- which moves up to Class 4A for the 2016-18 reclassification cycle -- will be close to home during the regular season because it's in a district with other teams from Benton and Washington counties, but it has to go to the River Valley for postseason play because it's in the 4A-4 Conference -- a league that includes Booneville, Ozark, Subiaco, Dover, Dardanelle, Pottsville and Waldron.
West Fork won't see any of its conference teams before the postseason tournament starts, and that lack of common opponents bothers West Fork's coaches since it will affect tournament seedings. Tigers coach Cody Vaught even said he would rather go to Pottsville and play a conference game that matters than stay close to home and play Greenland in a district game that may not affect the Tigers' positioning in the conference tournament.
Yet, all of this could have been avoided if the Arkansas Activities Association had carried out some other details listed in Proposal No. 4. It allowed Class 4A schools to be split into six conferences for these sports, with each conference having at least six schools and no more than 10 schools.
That means West Fork easily could have been part of a nine-team 4A-1 Conference and stayed closer to home for postseason play, while the 4A-4 could have been left with seven schools under those guidelines. However, the AAA allowed the Class 4A conferences to remain in the same alignment that is used for football purposes.
So was this part of the proposal just overlooked or simply ignored? West Fork girls basketball coach Rodney Selph, who also serves as the school's athletic director, didn't have the answer.
"It would have been great," Selph said. "We could have petitioned the AAA to stay up here, but that's not something we like to do.
"It is what it is. It's not the best-case scenario for us or the other teams in the 4A-4, but it's not the first time we've had to head south and face those teams. It's only a two-year cycle, and things might change in two years. We could end up going back down to Class 3A at that time."
West Fork is the lone Class 4A school with this problem, but at least a trio of Class 3A schools also share the same plight. Rose Bud, Paris and Jessieville have the dubious honors of playing teams in one area for district play, then head another direction for their conference tournaments.
Jessieville boys coach Eddie Lamb said his team will see a lot of familiar faces in district play, but that's a different story when the Lions have to travel up the ever-winding Arkansas 7 and play in the 3A-4 Conference tournament. With a 16-game district schedule and three tournaments already on its schedule, the only conference team Jessieville will face will be Perryville, thanks to a nonconference game being scheduled.
"I don't like the idea of these districts," he said. "We're basically going up there sight unseen, and how are they going to seed these tournaments? I hope we don't get black-balled, but you just don't know.
"The technology these days allows to see games of those teams, but that's not like actually playing them and knowing what we can do or not do against them. I guess we'll have to do what we've always done -- show up and hope we play well enough to win."
All of this mess might have been avoided if Proposal No. 4 had been carried out to its fullest, but it wasn't. So why should the AAA have the rule if it's not going to enforce it?
Sports on 06/26/2016