The Montana High School Association Executive Board approved the realignment of Class A at a meeting on Nov. 24, setting the stage for two divisions for most sports teams starting next year.
The board will finalize the realignment at its January meeting and schools have an opportunity to submit final comments until then.
Last summer, high school administrators representing the state’s 20 Class A schools voted to maintain the four conferences — Northwestern, Southwestern, Eastern and Central — but opted to create two regional divisions — Western and Eastern — that would divide the respective conferences into subgroups, similar to Class B’s districts.
The Northwestern and Southwestern A conference would combine into the Western A Division in the 2015-16 academic year. The new division would include Northwestern A’s Columbia Falls, Frenchtown, Polson and Whitefish and Southwestern A’s Dillon, Butte Central, Corvallis, Hamilton and Stevensville.
The Eastern Division would include Eastern A’s Billings Central, Miles City, Glendive, Hardin, Laurel and Sidney and Central A’s Belgrade, Browning Lewistown, Havre and Livingston.
The realignment would affect volleyball, basketball, wrestling and track and field.
In many ways, the new divisions won’t have many noticeable impacts until the postseason. In basketball, for example, each of the four conferences currently hosts a tournament that sends two teams to the state tournament. Under the new setup, there would be two divisional tournaments and four teams from each event would qualify for state, regardless of their conference.
Longtime Columbia Falls basketball coach Cary Finberg welcomes the changes as a way to enhance the competitive nature of the divisional tournaments, which have dwindled to four- and five-team events in recent years in Northwestern A.
“When you have an eight-team tournament, it just makes for a better tournament and a better atmosphere,” Finberg said. “I just think from a fan’s standpoint, from a player’s standpoint and from a coach’s standpoint, the eight-team tournament is so much better.”
Finberg acknowledged that there is a disturbing trend of Class A losing teams because of dropping enrollments across the state; Libby and Anaconda are the recent examples.
“The Class A division is kind of in a unique spot because there are schools that aren’t necessarily big schools and they’re in towns that aren’t necessarily growing,” he said. “Class A seems to be losing teams every year or every other year. And I don’t see it getting better. I don’t know if eventually down the road, the MHSA will have to maybe alter the enrollment numbers per class, or alter classes all together. I’m sure there’s a lot of concern.”
The board also approved the dissolution of speech and drama divisional tournaments in Class A with seeding directly to the state tournament. Brackets and seeding criteria for all activities will be submitted for final approval in January.
Other actions taken at the MHSA board meeting:
— The board approved Plains High School’s request to be reclassified from Class B to Class C. High school enrollment numbers for the next several years are projected to be below the maximum Class C enrollment figure. Plains is tentatively assigned to District 14C for basketball, volleyball and track and field, the Western Division for eight-man football, the Western B-C Division for wrestling and softball and the Class C division for boys and girls cross country and golf.
— The board approved reassigning Stevensville High School from the Southwestern A conference to the Northwestern A conference for boys and girls tennis.
— The board approved a recommendation from the MHSA Athletic Committee to add language to the rules regarding track and field. An athlete will only be allowed to compete in one top 10/8 track and field meet.