Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
Sweet Home High School will play in a new league beginning next school year, the Oregon School Activities Association Executive Board decided Oct. 24.
Sweet Home, with 774 students listed by the OSAA, will be grouped in a five-team 4A Division league called District 4 with Central (788 students), Newport (687), Philomath (585) and Taft (538). Toledo High School, with 399 students, was originally supposed to be in District 4, but petitioned for reclassification and was assigned to an eight-team 3A district.
The new alignment is bittersweet for Sweet Home. High School Athletic Director Steve Emmert said the athletic staff at the high school is generally unhappy about the fact that the Huskies are in a five-team league. He said a logical solution to that problem would have been to include Junction City or Cascade in District 4. Both of those teams are in seven-team leagues, he said.
But Toledo?s petition came at the last minute and the timing didn?t give District 4 or either of the two potential member schools a chance to make their own request.
?Now, scheduling is going to be a bit more challenging,? Emmert said. ?I don?t really like the fact that we?re going to have byes during league play. But we will make it work.?
The OSAA Executive Board voted Oct. 24 to expand the current four-class system to six classes and to realign schools, based on enrollment. The decision came after a 13-month process of reclassifying and redistricting.
The new plan, for the 2006-2010 time block, divides the 287 OSAA member schools into two additional classes to reduce the enrollment disparity between the smallest and largest schools in each classification.
The committee considered changes to league alignments, focusing on improving competitive balance within leagues, minimizing travel and expense for schools and maintaining current league alignments wherever possible.
?There was a problem with competitive balance in this state,? said board member Craig Roessler, superintendent of the Silver Falls School District. ?We have schools with more than 2,000 students in the same classification with schools of 900.?
The Huskies will play each league opponent three times in most sports, which means district buses will be traveling more miles than they already are.
School district Business Manager Kevin Strong said that the one-way average distance for league games will increase to 72 miles from the current 68 miles traveled to Capital Conference games.
?If we have to schedule numerous non-league games to fill out our schedule, overall travel costs will likely increase,? Strong said.
?The worst-case scenario is that nearby non-league schools such as Junction City and Stayton don?t share the same open dates that we have due to their own league schedules. We would then have to plan some long bus trips to find available opponents unless we decide to play league members multiple times.?
?From a cost standpoint, scheduling multiple games against league opponents makes sense,? Strong added.
?However, I can see where playing the same schools over and over could get old fast, especially when one team is much better than another. Steve Emmert and the new league?s athletic directors have a tough scheduling job ahead of them. I wish them well.?
Emmert said one silver lining is that he can schedule extra non-league games for the football team, which will continue to play league opponents once.
He said he is ?excited? about the schedule for next season, which includes an ?endowment? game with Sisters, which doesn?t count against Sweet Home?s nine-game schedule. The game also will raise funds for Sweet Home?s athletic fund, since ticket revenues will be split 50-50 with OSAA. Normally, revenue from games goes to the district.
Next season?s game will be played at Sisters, which will then visit Sweet Home the following year. The Huskies will also play Estacada, Junction City, Stayton, Tillamook and Seaside in addition to their league schedule of Philomath, Lincoln City Taft, Central and Newport.
?It looks like a great schedule,? Emmert said. ?Five at home, five away.?
The classification and league alignment plan for the 2006-2010 time block is available on the home page at osaa.org.