Blog by Ryan Cunningham, and thoughts are not representative of I3G Media

VALLEY CITY, ND  (NewsDakota.com)  The focus group working on the three-class plan for North Dakota basketball has presented their plan to the North Dakota High School Activities Association (NDHSAA).

Now, the real drama begins.

Presenting the plan was a first step, a requirement of the NDHSAA for consideration, and it had to be done a year before those activities would start in 2023-24.  Of course, that doesn’t mean it has passed, and the “full-court press” against the plan should be anticipated as a foregone conclusion before anything becomes final.  Words like “multiplier”, “lawsuit”, “boundaries” and more all will be debated.

There will be a lot of angles on this one.  Here are five, because, well, that’s the theme.

1) The Numbers Game Shifts

Final tallies show 64% percent of teams in favor of the plan, with as many remaining neutral as are in official opposition.  After years of debate, schools in North Dakota are beginning to see that the numbers game matters.  Enrollments of schools even below the 325 level currently dividing the two divisions are impacting level of competition and deep regional tournament runs/state tournament appearances.

While many of these same schools likely would have supported some form of three-division setup before, there were obvious shifts.  Central Cass, Kindred, and Watford City had a history of being wary of moving to three divisions, for a variety of reasons.  Their movement in support was key to the process.

Sure, one can argue they had direct gain on their minds.  Central Cass is a handful of years away from Class “A” status, owing to West Fargo Growth Syndrome.  Watford City will be Class “A” for the foreseeable future, and the last two boys basketball seasons have been painful, stacked with 40 and 50 point losses in succession, what I believe to be an attempt by current Class “A” coaches to prove a point about Watford City’s status in their division, and occupying two games on their schedules as mandatory in the Western Dakota Association (WDA)  (More on this in a bit).

There’s more here than that, however.  Kindred is in favor, and their status as a Class “B” team was stable into the long-term future, perhaps not as stable with the rapid growth of the Horace area, but less imminent of a change than Central Cass.  Rugby is in favor, with nothing at all to gain, and more to lose.

There’s a new generation of administrators out there.  Superintendents are increasingly getting out of the athletics game, allowing the athletic directors more of a free hand over their departments.  The ADs coming onto the scene are younger now, and they are products of their playing days happening in a landscape of competition that was not balanced.  They either spent a year getting blown out, or blowing everyone out but six teams (reference Grafton girls basketball for the last three years).  Younger ADs understand the shifts that have taken place in the numbers game, and they are making decisions based on a competitive season, not just how many state tournament appearances you can make.

Players want development, and that takes better competition.  Grafton girls basketball standout Walker Demers took off for the University of South Dakota a year early, graduating after her junior year.  I’m sure returning for another 20 butt-kickings and six good games wasn’t appealing when she had already done it all.  Traveling leagues are becoming more of an issue all the time.  Our ADs are now in a position of keeping players in school, as weird as that may sound.  These new administrators need competition.

2) No Surprise Here

Official opposition was predictable.  Of the 20 schools to file letters against the proposal, 14 are those moving into the middle division.

Those schools seem to like the status quo on the outside, yet make some big investments to take advantage of the status quo on the inside.

Hillsboro-Central Valley filed opposition.  And, why not? When you can put three players at 6’5″ or bigger on the floor, throw up three-pointers and get 20 offensive rebounds over Drayton/Valley-Edinburg or some other 50 mile round-trip co-op ) (this was every game they played in the Region II tournament last year), why would you want to move up?

Except for the fact that the taxpayers spent millions just a short while ago on a fitness center, football, track, and baseball upgrades, all in an effort to excel in sports.  H-CV wants to be better, until it’s time to acknowledge you’re better because you have resources.

And resources are a huge factor in this debate.  Fans, and the NDHSAA, need to finally realize that there’s more to this than enrollment.  Facilities, access to next-level coaching and camps, shorter distances in co-ops all matter to participation and development.  These, however, are intangibles that the NDHSAA currently has no metric to measure, except for relegation, which the football plan uses.

Thompson is building a new gym the voters have turned down multiple times.  New scoreboards and a grandstand for baseball and football, a completely renovated softball complex, all in the name of preserving the image of TitleTown.  They’ve even scheduled, and beaten, Grand Forks Central in boys basketball, and scheduled, and taken to five sets, Red River in volleyball.  Yet, they are against the plan.

With these schools, it’s really unfortunate that this much in financial resources and time would be spent, encouraging student-athletes to improve, and then settling for a level of play below their image.  They should be excited about this, and their financial efforts would lead you to believe they are.  It leads one to ask if they are buying wins, or developing students.

3) Silence is deafening

Mark Wiest, the athletic director of Mandan High School, was a member of the focus group.  He represented the WDA.

Not a single school in the WDA wrote a letter of support, and all but one stayed neutral.  Bismarck St. Mary’s was against, presumably because of the multiplier that doubles the value of a student that comes from outside your school’s boundaries.

Most of the Eastern Dakota Conference (EDC) ADs were silent, while Fargo Shanley was in opposition (see Bismarck St. Mary’s).

Why the silence?  Since silence can’t be argued, we can speculate, and the admins involved will likely choose not to answer.  So, all I can offer is speculation.

The most likely explanation: they just don’t care.  Hard to believe, I know, but, in my conversations with WDA ADs in the past, one in particular, the only concern voiced had been, no matter the solution worked out, they didn’t want it to affect them.  West-region ADs like their setup and didn’t want it to change for the good of that which was at levels below theirs.

This affects them.  Watford City and Belcourt move out of the WDA in this plan.  That’s the loss of four games a year for every team in the league, games they will have to replace with non-conference games.  The EDC loses Wahpeton, Valley City, and Devils Lake, six games a year.  While coaches look at this as an opportunity, ADs look at this as a headache.

And, for whatever reason, the idea of the crossover games are not very desirable for these schools.  It seems the conferences would just rather play each other and keep scheduling easy.  So, for now, the larger schools, for the most part, have chosen not to participate in the discussion.

4) Tweaks

The plan is not perfect, and it will likely be modified before being considered for final passage.  I had a chance to speak with an AD that worked on the plan last night (because that person didn’t know I was working on this post, I’ll keep the names out of it).  I was told there is some concern about the way that state tournaments are organized under this plan.

According to the plan, the first weekend is the A and B girls tournaments in separate cities, something that was described as a “potential financial disaster”.  I suggested just keeping it simple, playing each level’s boys and girls tournament the same weekend in the same place.  The person I spoke to was in agreement with that and suggested even using the Wednesday of the week of the tournament to accommodate additional facilities being considered.

Also, there’s the multiplier.  Doubling the value of students outside of your boundaries is aggressive and seems to be designed to make sure the smallest of the private schools play up in the middle division.  Many private schools have voiced concern about this.

Is double the right amount?  Is the multiplier the right option?  Maybe retroactive relegation, like which moved St. Mary’s football team up a level after a year of the new realignment, would be a better option of dealing with those schools.

5)  Lawsuit, schmahsuit

That being said, membership in the NDHSAA is voluntary.  It is not mandatory.  There is no law forcing any school district to offer extra-curricular activities at their school.

Being a part of a league means living within it’s rules and not intentionally doing things to disparage the league you claim to want membership in.

It wasn’t long ago that the University of St. Thomas was forcibly removed from the MIAC.  The other members, apparently, didn’t believe St. Thomas was playing to the spirit of Division III athletics.  St. Thomas had to find another home.

If any school sues the NDHSAA following a board, or general assembly, approved plan for competition, they are disparaging a league that has served generations of competitors in North Dakota for decades.  Any member that sues the league because their argument does not prevail should be expelled from the league.  That school can offer coordinated activities through AAU or USA-sponsored activities.