It is a problem that can be seen on high school playing fields
across the state – a team of nearly a hundred players stands
opposite a team of 20. The teams are in the same classification,
but are they in the same league?
It is a question being asked by coaches and athletics directors,
but it isn’t a new question.
Jack Lynch has been the district athletics director for Aurora
Public Schools for almost 20 years and has heard the debate being
waged for nearly that long.
“The most obvious problem is that you have a school that’s
forced to compete with teams that they can’t compete with,” Lynch
said.
Under the existing classification system, the level at which a
football team competes is based on the number of students enrolled
at the school. The Local Athletic Organizing Committee, made up of
10 athletics directors from across the state, evaluates each
school’s enrollment and determines its classification.
“There’s a two-year cycle for classification,” said Douglas
County High School Athletics Director Bart Stevens. “It’s only done
that way with football because football has seven
classifications.”
Other sports compete in classes 1A to 5A, but football has two
additional levels, 6-man and 8-man. But the idea that the success
of a school’s football program is directly related to the size of
the school’s enrollment is starting to be disproved.
Football programs at schools with high enrollments don’t always
have the participation that even schools in lower classification
do, and even if the participation numbers are comparable, the
success of the programs isn’t necessarily the same.
“The state allows teams to play up [in classification] if they
choose to, but there’s no bylaw that allows them to play down,”
Stevens said.
Schools do have options, but the options aren’t without
repercussions.
“A team could go play in an independent league,” Stevens said,
“but the bad thing about that is that they wouldn’t be eligible for
state playoffs.”
Bert Borgmann, assistant commissioner of the Colorado High
School Activities Association, said he thinks forfeiting the right
to play in the state playoffs is the only fair compromise to
playing down in classification.
“I don’t think you could ever look at a bylaw that would allow
them to play down and not give up the right to compete at state,”
Borgmann said. “Arvada’s taking advantage of it right now, and
they’re trying to rebuild their program.”
Forcing kids to forfeit their right to earn a state championship
isn’t a sacrifice that all schools are willing to take, and those
schools’ officials are searching for another solution. One idea
that has been considered is moving unsuccessful teams into a less
competitive league.
“That’s really a school-driven avenue,” Borgmann said. “It’s up
to the leagues to accept or decline schools, so that’s an issue
that the schools have to address before they bring it to
us.”
Lynch said changing leagues isn’t a process to be taken lightly.
The schedules for the entire league would have to be reworked, and
the school would be forced to shoulder the added expense of busing
teams out of the area.
But Lynch said he’s encouraged that people are starting to think
of other ways to solve the problem.
“That’s the kind of thinking we need to have,” Lynch said. “We
want the kids to have some success, and I think we need to see
outside the box.”
While many school officials and coaches agree that something
needs to be done, a viable solution hasn’t been as easy to agree
upon.
“Everybody I’ve talked to thinks there needs to be something in
place,” Stevens said. “It’s something that needs to be given some
good thought, and it has to be fair for all the kids, but there has
to be something that allows teams to be successful.”