It’s official: Sweet Home will compete in most of its sports at the 3A level next year and, depending on how things go, beyond that.
The Oregon School Activities Association approved its Classification and Districting committee’s proposed changes to the state’s classification and districting plan for 2026-30 on Dec. 15 by a a 13-1 vote, and the OSAA Delegate Assembly approved the amendments in three-quarters votes.
Under the plan, the association will continue to operate under a six-classification system, which has been the case 2006-07.
Sweet Home will move from the 4A Oregon West Conference to the 3A Mountain Valley Conference, which includes Creswell, La Pine, Pleasant Hill, Sisters and Trinity Lutheran of Bend, which is moving up from the 2A level in team sports.
The OSAA decision concluded a four-month process which began in August with the first meeting of the committee, chaired by Tigard-Tualatin School District Superintendent, Iton Udosenata. The committee received over 300 pieces of written correspondence and saw 171 groups testify in front of either the committee or the Executive Board.
The Executive Board did some last-minute fine-tuning to the committee’s final recommendation, adjusting the school Average Daily Membership (ADM) cutoff point between 5A (581) and 4A (580) from the committee’s final recommendation. That adjustment returned Cascade and Henley to the 4A-3 Oregon West and 4A-5 Skyline conferences, respectively.
ADM is the metric OSAA uses to classify schools into competitive size divisions (such as 6A, 5A, 4A, etc.). It’s calculated based on a school’s ninth- through 11th-grade enrollment over several years, adjusted by a socio-economic factor (free/reduced lunch numbers), to create a stable number that reflects a school’s overall size and student population, ensuring fair competition.
The Oregon West will now include Cascade, Central, Newport, Philomath, Stayton and Taft. Under the new classification, Elmira will move from the 3A level back to the 4A Sky-Em League, which will include Cottage Grove, Junction City, Marist, Marshfield, North Bend and South Umpqua.
The plan also creates a seven-team 6A-5A Southwest Hybrid of Ashland (5A), Crater (5A), Eagle Point (5A), Grants Pass (6A), North Medford (6A), Roseburg (6A) and South Medford (6A) in Southern Oregon. That decision adds an additional hybrid league to the previously created 6A-5A Midwestern Hybrid in the Eugene-Springfield area.
Included in the committee’s recommendation is for the Executive Board to reconvene the Computation of ADM Task Force next school year to explore potential changes to how ADM is calculated when classifying schools. The Committee received testimony and written correspondence related to considering the following additional criteria: school participation figures, adjusting/eliminating any socioeconomic factor, moving private schools to higher classifications, going back to counting all 9-12 students, considering the impact of transfers, incorporating a success/lack of success factor, and examining the impact of any such changes specifically as it relates to smaller schools.