The following is an opinion piece by Ryan Cunningham, and does not reflect the views of NewsDakota.com, its stations and sponsors.
VALLEY CITY, ND (NewsDakota.com) So, you’ve heard that basketball is moving to three divisions for the 2023-24 year.
The question now likely becomes, “Now what?”
The answer is complicated.
In the greater NewsDakota.com viewing and listening area, several teams adjust their regional affiliations, a few adjust their classifications, all will likely adjust their opponents.
But that only tells the story on paper, for the status right now.
Undoubtedly, every school has looked at how this affects them. For schools like Valley City, Central Cass, and others that have been advocates, this will likely be easier than some others. Schools in co-op situations have different decisions to make, and still others will have schedules to fill.
One of the coaches and athletic directors I follow on Twitter wrote today, “Breaking news–we have zero basketball games scheduled for 23-24. We have two maybes, and eight have-tos.”
Knowing what we know, and hearing what we hear, lets explore five points of space on the issue. Keep in mind, this is only about the schools in the greater NewsDakota.com area. I’m sure a statewide recap will be available wherever they put the tombstone for the two-division system in the ground as a memorial, probably somewhere in the northeast.
The least affected
Of the schools in our area, this would have to be Jamestown, at least for now.
The Blue Jays will be in the top division, as they are right now. They would be in the Western Dakota Association (WDA), as they are right now.
Where the Blue Jays are most affected would be the loss of two opponents. Turtle Mountain and Watford City drop to the middle division in the new plan. So, Jamestown would have, theoretically, four dates on their schedule to fill. Jamestown may welcome that, as the Eastern Dakota Conference (EDC) teams will lose three opponents, Valley City, Wahpeton, and Devils Lake. All of them will be looking for six extra games, and Jamestown is 100 miles from Fargo. Blue Jay fans may look at that as a nice change of pace.
Now, about the “for now” part. According to a report from North Dakota Department of Public Instruction, Jamestown’s current fourth-through-seventh grade enrollment is 604 with class sizes of 136, 156, 146, and 166. Their kindergarden-through-third grade class sizes are 133, 142, and 148.
This does not include St. Johns enrollment. All in all, Jamestown may be trending toward the middle division.
The board can always revise the top-end number downward, and there’s some feeling that the classification committee should have the power to move a team up based on success as well as numbers, so this could work itself out.
Or, it might not. Time will tell.
New Frontiers
The teams in our area changing classes include Valley City, Central Cass, Kindred, Lisbon, Northern Cass and Carrington. All but Carrington will move to the middle division, and, as of right now, all are in the same southeast region with Fargo Oak Grove, Wahpeton, and Wyndmere-Lidgerwood-Hankinson, with the latter a girls member only.
At least, today.
If you go to Vegas, there’s some smart money going on that W-L-H co-op dissolving. It’s a girls co-op only, and with no more Squirrels, Vikings, Grovers, and Jaguars to chase around, the Hankinson Pirates would be in a better position to go back on their own, and both Wyndmere-Lidgerwood and Hankinson would be separate entities again.
Then, there’s Lisbon. The Broncos have had a tough run in basketball, and a classification committee will be formed to hear petitions on teams moving. Would Lisbon be a candidate to opt down and remain Class B for a while? It’s a possibility, and probably a stronger one than 50/50.
I would also keep my eye on Northern Cass. The reason: the southeast region would have seven teams if the W-L-H co-op dissolved in girls, and its seven now on paper for boys. The northeast region has six, but I’ve heard strong rumblings about the Hillsboro and Central Valley co-op getting some long looks from the patrons between the schools.
If that dissolved, and the region in the northeast fell to five teams, it’s likely the board would look at sliding Northern Cass to the northeast. That means a couple of extra games for everyone to fill.
Carrington is now in that northeast region with Devils Lake, Four Winds, Thompson, Hillsboro-Central Valley, and Grafton. The biggest adjustment for the Cardinals will be the absolute gauntlet of teams they will play. Devils Lake has a bright future, Four Winds, Thompson, and HCV all have state titles in recent memory, and Grafton is in the state tournament now when Thompson and HCV are not.
On The Move
Besides moving classes, some teams are moving to different regions in their same class.
Barnes County North is the team in our area that gets the most attention here. They move from a south-central region now to the southeast district of Region 1. Their new district will take them to Tri-State, a co-op most of us know as Fairmout-Campbell-Tintah, with a South Dakota flavor now added in the form of Rosholt. Bison fans could see a road game in one of three different states.
Oakes moves back to the southeast, where they spent the bulk of their success in the mid-to-late 90s and mid 2000’s. Griggs-Midkota moves to the northeast district of Region 2, which will be a homecoming for Griggs County Central of sorts. They were a district three team before the co-op, and were a long-standing member of the Red River Valley Conference.
Its Not You, Its Me
Union, now and forever, one and inseparable, is written into the state motto (“Liberty and” starts the motto, but that doesn’t apply here.).
But that’s never really applied to co-ops.
We’ve covered some of this already, but for the sake of being thorough, lets lay it out.
I really think Hankinson will put a girls team back on the floor, and end their co-op with Wyndmere-Lidgerwood. At the meeting in December, officials from Hankinson stated they only co-oped because they simply couldn’t compete. The desire was to be the Pirates.
This would not be a messy break-up at all. It seems all parties understand, and would look at this as positive.
Griggs/Midkota is one that is worth paying attention to. I’m hearing there’s some desire on the part of Griggs County Central to be the Cougars again. I’m not sure how Midkota feels about that.
That area of the state has seen some really rough co-ops, from the Griggs Barnes football co-op that spanned Griggs, Barnes County North, and Midkota, to the current Nelson County baseball co-op for high school and Legion, which, if memory serves, covers Cooperstown, Hannaford, Jessie, Glenfield, Sutton, McHenry, Binford, Tolna, Pekin, McVille, Aneta, Michigan, Petersburg, Lakota, and probably a couple of small towns I missed, its tough to find critical mass in that part of the state.
We talked about Hillsboro-Central Valley. I think this one’s 50/50. I know there were some phone calls being exchanged about Central Valley needing time to sort out the issue of three divisions, and the area was mentioned in the meeting today by a board member as well. Something seems to be afoot there.
If I had to guess, I think LaMoure/Litchville-Marion is on solid ground. They’ve had success, and there’s a natural relationship between Marion and LaMoure. Playing Devils Advocate, if someone was entertaining a thought about putting the Litchville-Marion-Montpelier Rebels back together, the combined K-12 enrollment of the three schools is 238, very similar to LaMoure’s 253.
That presents the dilemma: what is the right reason to co-op?
L/L-M has been very successful, and Edgeley-Kulm/Montpelier has had success as well. However that’s two total teams. If the intent is to compete and win, this is working. If the intent is participation and offering as much opportunity as possible, you’d likely favor fielding three teams out of this group, not two.
But, Ellendale comes in at 335 K-12, Edgeley-Kulm comes in at 357, and Medina/Pingree-Buchanan comes in at 358. In this scenario, LaMoure and Litchville-Marion-Montpelier would be taking on their district counterparts with 1oo less kids in school, an average of about eight a class.
I’ve always subscribed to the “always-sometimes-never” theory of co-oping. Always co-op to survive, sometimes co-op to compete, never co-op to win. It’s hard to tell how if this one falls between survive and compete, or right at compete. I’m glad I don’t have to make the call.
And then there’s Maple River, the co-op between Maple Valley and Hope-Page led to a state Legion baseball tournament berth…….for Mayville, along with some new floor decals in Finley. Frankly, I have no idea how this one was thought up, but I met with a few school board members in Page when it was announced. They told me they were tired of losing to Thompson by 50.
So, they co-oped with Maple Valley, and lost to Central Cass by 44 in the second game of the season.
But, the team has had a very good season outside of that game, and with Central Cass, Kindred, and Nothern Cass bugging out, there’s a real chance for this team to do something. Long-term, however, participation on the Hope-Page side is a real question mark. It’s 31 miles from Luverne to Tower City to get to practice.
The Tournaments
I’ll keep this one short: I don’t see a financially successful path for the tournaments with any structure by AA boys and girls together, A boys and girls together, and B boys and girls together. We need another day for the tournaments. Wednesday needs to come into play. We can horse around with two sites and such, but that will be a kick in the backside, and people will notice.
Of all the things, this is the one question mark I am most curious about. I hope I’m wrong.
Ryan Cunningham can be contacted by emailing ryan@newsdakota.com.