Oskaloosa is leaving. Pella Christian probably should. They love playing against schools smaller than them anyway. Won't be much left. Pella should've stayed.
High School Sports Thread
- Thread starter qwerty
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Oskaloosa is leaving. Pella Christian probably should. They love playing against schools smaller than them anyway. Won't be much left. Pella should've stayed.
Class designations don't matter for conferences either. Of course it matters for playoffs, but my opinion is the most important thing that the state and schools should be trying to achieve is to get as many competitive games throughout a season as possible. If that means having conferences that cross over three classes, so be it. If that means really small conferences and lots of noncon where ADs can find competitive games across different areas and classes, all the better.
I think some of the DM Metro schools cancel league games sometimes then add additional games against each other. I think that's good in practice, but let's have conferences that reflect that reality.
If conferences achieve a good percentage of reasonably competitive games with the travel being manageable, then job well done. Every now and then having a chill game that you know you're going to blow a team out can be kind of fun. But when it's most of the games, that's not enjoyable and sucks for kids.
They need to do what soccer and football did, biggest class is top 36 schools. Unfortunately for Norwalk, we get bumped up in football due to free & reduced adjustor. In all other boys sports it is top 48. Or they should mirror girls union and go top 40 and create 5A for basketball/baseball/track/cross country.
When we got soccer to move to 4 classes, and got the top class smaller than 36, I thought all the other coaches associations would follow suit and push for it, but it's been four years now and I don't hear anyone else making a push.
No matter what is done for class cutoff, the last teams that get bumped up are probably not going to like it.
True, but there is a big gap between the biggest, fastest growing school districts and the others. In both kids and resources.
Sure, and if Norwalk was one spot lower in football and in 4A, some poor, rural school at the bottom of 4A with 50-60% of the students is going to be looking up at Norwalk and seeing a much larger, well financed school that has a huge gap in kids and resources.
No matter where they draw the lines the biggest teams are going to like it and the smallest teams in the class are going to hate it. There’s no way around that other than continuing to chop up the classes even more, and travel and scheduling are already a challenge as it is.
This is the story of my high school career.
Played at Osky and we always battled Boone to be #48 in 4a while playing in the little Hawkeye. My baseball career ended vs Iowa City High, Lincoln and Dowling. Brutal.
Sounds like when Davis Co. got placed in 3A for football when our youngest was a senior. They got to play Osky who featured Tyler Sash and Keokuk that won the state championship that year. Just a brutal schedule playing Washington, Fairfield. DC was totally out of the league playing those schools.
I faintly remember that. Felt sorry for you guys. In elementary at Newton, we were in the Big 8 conference that featured some of the best future division one talent. Got beat by East Waterloo 98-6 and the next year changed comferences to keep kids coming out for football. Otherwise we were only going to have a handful wanting to go out. Before districts.
Agree. Teams/schools have been going winless and losing by 40-50 pts a game since they've had high school football. Screwing around with classes won't change anything.
Right, and of course overall teams are better as you go up in classes. But it isn’t like if you’re getting blown out in one class you’re going to drop down and suddenly be good. It isn’t THAT big of a difference.
Just three years ago- a local AD proposed the very conference that you have listed as the CIML small. Indianola was strongly opposed to anything related to Dowling or Waukee. They are very happy as LHC members. Now, administrations change and so do values in communities so I suppose anything is possible.
I don't think DCG has decided but that LHC with Urbandale added in is a nice little conference.
UHS, Ames, DCG, Norwalk, Indianola, Newton, DMC
Nobody is arguing that every team will be .500 and everyone is equal. But when soccer went to 4 classes, the top class went from biggest schools being triple the size of smaller schools to closer to double. More importantly, 1A went from a 7/1 ratio top to bottom schools to more like 3/1. Everyone not equal, not true parity, but more balanced and fair.
Find a way where Norwalk, Indianola, DCG, ADM, Bondurant, Urbandale, North Polk, DSM Christian, etc. can be in a conference together. We’d all be punching at our own weight. Would be competitive.
All these schools are growing but can’t compete with the Waukee or Ankeny’s of the world quite yet.
All these schools are growing but can’t compete with the Waukee or Ankeny’s of the world quite yet.
Newton is exploring an exit plan. Without Urbandale the LHC won’t have enough members to continue as a conference.
Depends, would the state board allow DCG to leave the LHC if it drops the conference to 6 schools? CIML doesn't "need" to expand.
Depends on the sport, but DCG can. But I agree, but I think Ames and Urbandale belong with DCG, Norwalk and Indianola. NP is still fairly small but growing and good in sports. I don’t know much about B-F sports.
Perspective is probably driven by the sports you care about the most.
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