The Wyoming High School Activities Association this week posted the ADM figures for the next round of reclassification — decisions the group will make this fall to start in the fall of 2011. Click here to see them (Adobe Acrobat required).
Obviously, the ramifications of reclassification, and the new ADMs, go beyond football. The big change for fall 2011 will be the addition of Cheyenne South, which adds one more school into the jumble and presents some interesting new questions. I wrote at this time last year that the WHSAA has some tough decisions to make when it comes to South’s addition to football. The new numbers make it even more so….
Reclassification always causes some hang-ups along the line. This cycle, with South, makes it especially interesting.
For now, 4A football and conferences for the other 4A sports appear to be the most contentious subjects of reclassification this year.
In a nutshell, the WHSAA needs to decide on a number for 4A football, and every other classification decision can cascade down from there. Will 4A have 10 teams in it, like now, with South in 4A and Green River (now 12th in ADMs) bumped to 3A? Or will it have 11 — with Riverton (ADM 11th) forced in, or with Green River possibly opting up? Or will it have 12 with BOTH Riverton and Green River?
From there, deciding on the number of teams for 3A, 2A and 1A divisions will become much easier. Until then, we can’t really speculate on which teams will be in which classifications…
Oh, and one extra wrench for the WHSAA to deal with: South is not anticipating a varsity schedule in 2011, the first year of the new reclassification cycle.
This year is also the opportunity for 1A teams to decide if they want to play six-man or 11-man. Has anyone heard anything about current 11-man teams prepping for a move to six-man? Or vice-versa? Those decisions, too, will help guide the WHSAA’s decision-making for both classifications and conferences.
As for 4A conference divisions — something that has dogged the WHSAA for the past four years, even though they try to stay out of it as much as possible and technically don’t even set conferences, only regions for regional tournaments — that gets fun with South coming in and Star Valley (ADM 13th) likely leaving to go back to 3A. It’s either really easy (Evanston, Riverton, Green River, Rock Springs and the two Casper schools in the West, Gillette, Sheridan, Laramie and the three Cheyenne schools in the East) or it’s really hard. Knowing how those discussions have gone over the past four years, it’ll be really hard.
Otherwise, everything else looks pretty straightforward for all sports except football. Star Valley with ADM 13 appears headed back to 3A for everything but football; Thermopolis, ranked 31st, will head back to 2A; and Lingle, hanging out in the 49th spot, will go to 1A for all except football.
For football, as explained earlier, the speculations about which teams might end up in which classifications is a little premature. But IF the WHSAA sticks with its 10-12-16 split for 4A, 3A and 2A, and IF no teams opt up or down, then it looks like Green River will move to 3A, Wheatland will go to 2A and Wyoming Indian will head to 1A.
(If you don’t know what ADM is, it stands for Average Daily Membership and it’s based on projected enrollment numbers. Check out the WHSAA front page to read up on that.)
The ADMs, with two-year averages (of course, you can click here and see the full numbers all pretty-like):
1. Gillette, 2,216
2. Natrona, 2,023
3. East, 1,556
4. Kelly Walsh, 1,447
5. Rock Springs, 1,397
6. Central, 1,352
7. Laramie, 1,040
8. Sheridan, 922
9. South, 910
10. Evanston, 900
11. Riverton, 777
12. Green River, 767
13. Star Valley, 734
14. Cody, 690
15. Jackson, 654
16. Lander, 502
17. Douglas, 500
18. Powell, 480
19. Rawlins, 478
20. Torrington, 389
21. Worland, 378
22. Buffalo, 345
23. Pinedale, 310
24. Wheatland, 286
25. Newcastle, 248
26. Mountain View, 226
27. Lyman, 225
28. Glenrock, 219
29. Lovell, 214
30. Big Piney, 203
31. Thermopolis, 201
32. Kemmerer, 183
33. Burns, 183
34. Wright, 178
35. Greybull, 167
36. Moorcroft, 163
37. Tongue River, 145
38. Big Horn, 140
39. Wind River, 132
40. Wyoming Indian, 124
41. Rocky Mountain, 117
42. Southeast, 117
43. Sundance, 113
44. Lusk, 113
45. Pine Bluffs, 109
46. Shoshoni, 103
47. Riverside, 97
48. Saratoga, 97
49. Lingle, 92
50. Upton, 85
51. Burlington, 80
52. Snake River, 71
53. Hanna, 71
54. St. Stephens, 70
55. Fort Washakie Charter, 65
56. Hulett, 64
57. Guernsey-Sunrise, 64
58. Cokeville, 63
59. Farson, 61
60. Normative Services, 60
61. Dubois, 58
62. Midwest, 55
63. Kaycee, 51
64. Arapaho Charter, 51
65. Ten Sleep, 39
66. Encampment, 36
67. Rock River, 33
68. Meeteetse, 33
69. Arvada-Clearmont, 33
70. Glendo, 20
71. Chugwater, 18
I love seeing the enrollment figures come out every two years — partly because where these numbers fall have a huge influence on what schools do for two years, partly because I’m a reclass nerd. Granted, enrollment numbers aren’t everything, as success is also determined by hard work, attitude, community support, etc., etc., blah blah blah. But they’re a big piece of the puzzle.
Thoughts? Ideas? Concerns? Questions? Post ’em below. I’m always down for a reclass chat.
–patrick
You couldn’t have sat on this for at least a month Patrick? Are you trying to kill our 2010-11 sports season? 🙂
Mind set has a lot to do with success and I’m hoping the speculation of changing classes will not affect ours.
Patrick, South will play a 3a football schedule this year, JV only. Next year, 2011, they will play a varsity 3a schedule and the way it stands at this point, will move to 4a in 2012, but as we all know, this could change. If that were to happen, and nothing changes, Riverton will play 3a football this fall, 4a next fall, and then back to 3a in 2012. Steve
I would really hope for the sake of common sense and some consideration for the school that they wouldn’t make Riverton do that. I think there are going to be some big decisions come out of the meetings in Sep and Oct.
Long term, I really think it would make the most sense, logistically, to have 12 teams in 4A…. but the South thing throws a wrench into that for 2011. One idea I had was to go top 24 in 4A and 3A… an 11-13 split in 2011 and a 12-12 split in 2012. For 2011, the byes for the 4A teams could be filled by a 3A team (something like Star Valley v. Evanston, Lander v. Riverton, Jackson v. Rock Springs, Wheatland v. Laramie, Cody v. Sheridan, Douglas v. Gillette, Worland v. Green River, Powell v. Natrona, Buffalo v. Central, South v. East, Torrington v. Kelly Walsh… and somewhere in there a Pinedale v. Rawlins to balance out the 3A schedule). Then the schedule would balance itself with 12 teams apiece in 4A and 3A in 2012…. Something else that could work would be a “top 22” arrangement with an 11-11 split in 2011 (making for even arrangements in bye weeks) and a 12-10 split in 2012… but now I’m getting ahead of myself.
Anyway, I agree with Dahl that some special considerations will need to be made when considering football. The reclass for other sports, fortunately, looks pretty straightforward.
–patrick
The more I watch this, the more I am convinced that the WHSAA needs to start looking to draw lines based on the ADM numbers and move away from a fixed number of schools in each classification. I also think that we need to put more focus on getting good conferences and regions and look for out-of-state games to fill out schedules. I suspect that most schools have numerous comparable sized schools within a shorter distance but across state lines when compared to some of the trips that are required for the almost all in-state schedules as is the case now.
That would make it easy to simply set 4A up with either 13 or 15 teams split into 3 or 4 regions. The competative balance within each region would be terrific, travel would be much more reasonable and in the end, it still will take an exceptional team performance to win a state title.
I am not excited to see another two years of boarder-to-boarder travel just to seed an expanded regional bracket implemented in order to perfect the first round state seedings.
Hillsdale, you make some good points. I think one of the reasons why the WHSAA went away from specific enrollment cutoffs was the thing you bring up, an uneven number of teams in the regions. In listening to the 2006 fallout, it becomes clearer and clearer that in-season play is not quite as important as equitable play at regional and state tournaments. You can agree or disagree with that, but for now it’s the choice that the 4A coaches and ADs lean to more often than not…
–patrick