by The Schwab » Wed Mar 07, 2018 5:13 pm
I would say it's more about money than about kids, I don't think the driving force behind it is completely based on money. Here are some thoughts on why I feel the NDHSAA board is fighting the 3 class so hard.
1. It would mess up the 3 straight weekends of state tournaments, you would either have to play both boys and girls class b and a on the same weekend like the would AA or you'd have to have to take a lot longer for state tournaments.
2. They are afraid of lawsuits by schools without defined district lines if they were to be automatically bumped up a class (which a couple of the plans have had as part of them)
3. They are afraid that the operating cost of running 16 extra regional tournament would outweigh the profits generated by those tournaments.
4. If it had to include volleyball, they would have to change their current state volleyball tournament set up. You can't play 3 games in the same facility at the same time (maybe the Bismarck Events Center could do that though)
5th and most important- no one who is currently on the board wants it, people look at the final night attendance of the state class B and say "we can't mess with this, look at this atmosphere".
Can you imagine what the attendance would look like if you had 8 small schools in a tournament? The entire towns would shut down and you would have people from towns that didn't make it that would go watch just like they did before. I realize that there are still people that go every year, but that number is shrinking.
The NDHSAA board is there to serve the members of the association, when a plan passes the district chairs meeting with a 14-2 vote (and the only 2 voting no did so because of the quick time frame for implementation) and the board chooses not to even discuss it tells me that people on the board have their own agendas. I realize that it didn't include volleyball, how hard would it be to put the word VOLLEYBALL in the plan? It wouldn't be
I realize that there is more that goes into these decisions, but if you are an association made up of schools in North Dakota, shouldn't you try to organize it how those schools want? Maybe I'm way off on this.
I 100 percent agree with the fact that they are student-athletes, the student should always come first. If we were really worried about seat time, would we require so many state tests? Would we cut down the number of times kids leave for Vocational programs (FFA, DECA, FCCLA etc...), how about science olympiad and science fair? I have a feeling if the NDHSAA's reasoning was seat time for kids, they wouldn't have set up a AA football class that plays cross-state games during the regular season.
I love class B basketball as much as anyone in the state, however, to say it isn't a broken system is wrong. Will I still go to the class B tournament every single year even if nothing changes? You bet your butt I will.
The Schwab