Iowa High School BEDS count 24-25
- Thread starter qwerty
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Imagine a Tuesday night trip in January from Algona to Sioux Center for conference hoops.
Conferences aren't precursors to the postseason in other sports the way districts are for football.
When there were rain outs during baseball. Some schools would do a noon make up on the way to their 7 pm game. BP at 9, bus leaves at 10. Get home at 1 am.
In the early days of Bishop Garrigan, towns were Sioux City, Sioux Falls, Dubuque, and Des Moines. Now to get big name schools on ESPN, let’s fly them 3 states away. Take hockey teams to the next country. How much money do peoples le want to spend?
I think there could be a statewide reset for the other sports that could balance competition and travel. For sports with lots of games including mid-week ones like basketball and baseball, I could see having regional conferences that include schools across two classes.
Right now conferences might include teams from three classes, and because they sort of change 1-2 teams at time, the travel is not great either.
There will always be a tradeoff between travel and maintaining conferences with schools of similar size. But if the two associations got together and wanted to do a mass rework of conferences across the state, it could be done. Put in some bounds like min and max number of teams, max difference in BEDS count from the highest to lowest in a league, including only two classes to be represented in a conference, etc., then optimize for travel. No idea how easily you'd get conferences and ADs on board, but building that kind of model wouldn't be that hard.
My younger sister was a cheerleader at Garrigan and I drove a vehicle SE of Des Moines to a football back in the mid 1980’s. I think the 5A schools don’t travel quite as far as they used to? Des Moines to Sioux City is a long drive.
The conference the Des Moines Schools are in ranges south to Ottumwa, North to Mason City and Fort Dodge, East to Waterloo...they travel a pretty fair amount. The 5A CIML schools don't travel far.
It won't last another 5 years.
Ames is leaving. The new Waterloo High School is going to play in the Mississippi Valley. Fort Dodge and Marshalltown could easily slide into the Little Hawkeye.
Mason City and Ottumwa are screwed. Going to be in a Decorah situation.
The more I read this thread the more I think they need to just dump conferences all together and move to the district system that Football uses. They already make those districts for football so just make it the same for all sports. Then use the same system, calculations and rules.
That would solve 95% of all these conference issues.
That would solve 95% of all these conference issues.
They could be the districts are classed by size, which involves a lot of traveling for some schools. Conference tend to be a lot closer milage wise for most schools but there are some outliers like Ottumwa a 4A school with no other like schools around them. I have thought for years, Ottumwa would be better off splitting the district at the river and have two smaller 2A schools. They do charter to most of their games but they wear out going up and down 163
High school conferences make as much sense as college conferences at this point.
Which is to say they make no sense. Even 40 years ago a lot of them had schools that were on totally different footing, but just happened to be close to each other.
Which is to say they make no sense. Even 40 years ago a lot of them had schools that were on totally different footing, but just happened to be close to each other.
Top of Iowa wasnt bad when they quit forcing Baseball and softball to all 17 other schools. When it was east and west, it was aligned pretty good. The issue team was always Eagle Grove. They ended up being the ones to blow up an extremely long term conference named north Iowa.
They wanted in because they were getting stomped in the NCC and Osage wanted more teams with wrestling. Eagle grove continued to get stomped (because they are just awful) and now traveled further to do it. So, they started to try to go back to their old partner and ended up taking two schools with them. Garner and FC said they wanted more freshmen games. Well they have each other, EG and clarion (who both struggle to fill varsity even sometimes) Hampton, and St Eds as their conference grouping. So, that isn’t really a valid reason.
Conferences are just a scheduling alliance, that is it. Make it easier on AD's to get games scheduled then fill in with non-con. Not going districts in every sport...different classifications for different sports, football has 8 classifications, basketball, baseball, track and soccer have four, but soccer has fewer teams in 4A than the other three sports.
Also, the state has zero interest in taking over scheduling for all sports, none.
Pretty sure there is zero interest from the LHC in Fort Dodge or Marshalltown. LHC wants Urbandale to join, hoping they change their mind next year. After that looking at RRC schools like Carlisle, Bondurant, ADM, North Polk.
LHC needs Pella Christian and Oskaloosa to find other homes.
