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Tuesday, July 1, 2008
7A-6A Combo First of Changes to Come
Western Arkansas, AR
By: Mike Capshaw
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Photo(s) By: Kyle Danztler/MyActionPortraits.com
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That’s no less than 12 hours — counting restroom and restaurant breaks — and 650 miles for your son or daughter on a bus. And dark, winding highways surely won’t bode well for naps or studying, which would be nice considering the trips would return hours before the first period bell.
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Peering through his stylish-framed glasses, Dick Johnson sees the future of high school sports in Arkansas.
The Fayetteville athletic director will be the first to say it doesn’t take Nostradamus to predict the effect rising fuel prices will have on athletics.
“We’ve got to take realistic measures to modify what we’re doing,” Johnson said.
On Aug. 5, school administrators converge on Little Rock for the annual governing board meeting with a proposal from the Arkansas Activities Association recommending 6A and 7A classifications to combine, with the exception of postseason football.
If it doesn’t pass, 5A schools like Siloam Springs that should move up a class in 2010 would have conference games on school nights as far away as El Dorado.
That’s no less than 12 hours — counting restroom and restaurant breaks — and 650 miles for your son or daughter on a bus. And dark, winding highways surely won’t bode well for naps or studying, which would be nice considering the trips would return hours before the first period bell.
Johnson, like many athletic directors in our region, hopes the proposal passes. If it doesn’t, he knows a similar one will soon have to be adopted anyway.
“This is just the first of many changes we’re going to see,” Johnson said.
With diesel prices creeping upward of $5 per gallon, schools might be better off busing students in Toyota Prius these days. Add in $15 per hour for a bus driver and horse-drawn buggies might be a better solution.
“Just a few years ago when I was crunching those numbers, we budgeted $40 to go anywhere on the Hill and it was $60 to Fort Smith and $75 to Russellville,” Johnson said. “Now it’s $200 to go to Rogers.”
Crunching numbers is on the mind of every athletic director and school administrators often look to athletics as a spot to slice funding. But with not much bread to begin with, sports is the last place to loaf on the budget.
As far as travel, cutting sports wouldn’t add up to much anyway. Johnson said only about 10 percent of Fayetteville’s overall travel budget is used for athletics and other activities.
Notwithstanding, travel to games still will be taken into account.
“You’re going to see (conference) doubleheaders emerge again in baseball and softball,” Johnson said. “It’s not balanced to play a doubleheader because one team has both games at homes, but the reality is you save one trip.”
Saving money is the root of Johnson’s other predictions as well.
“I can see the adoption of limitations on the size of travel squads,” Johnson said. “That would only affect the largest schools where they only take two buses instead of three buses.”
That means coaches will also have to cut kids, not just dollars, to select traveling teams.
But that’s not all.
“What I see in the future are a lot of closer proximity games,” Johnson said. “There’ll be a lot more games with teams playing different classifications, just because they’re only a short drive away.”
While the competition in softball between teams like Farmington and Fayetteville isn’t much different, the field in football is tilted greatly when schools from drastically different classifications play. Football travels five road games per year, which doesn’t amount to much mileage and games on Friday nights equal less class time lost as opposed to a Tuesday night game in another sport.
That’s why football won’t be affected by the changes that athletic directors like Johnson — who should probably grow his goatee into a full Nostradmus-like beard — predict will help curb costs down the road.
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