You can't just independently choose to move down, though. It's a function of enrollment. My high school jumped back and forth between 2A and 3A a few times, based mostly on the enrollment changes of other schools.
Proposed CIML Split
- Thread starter Incyte
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You can't just independently choose to move down, though. It's a function of enrollment. My high school jumped back and forth between 2A and 3A a few times, based mostly on the enrollment changes of other schools.
Where a school falls classification wise is sort of by school enrollment. The top 48 schools get classified as 4A, the next 64 get classified as 3A, the next 72 get classified at 2A, ... (I don't remember the number for 1A...class A gets who ever is left)
Try Iowa Falls or Hampton to Algona. Awful bus rides. Eagle Grove/Clarion-Goldfield had it perfect in the old North Central Conference...worst trip was Clear Lake and it only takes an hour.
Classification for high school sports in Iowa is determined by enrollment in grades 9-11, not the entire district. The BEDS document is posted on the IAHSAA and IGHSAU websites.
http://www.iahsaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/2013-2014_Enrollments_Numerical.pdf
As for Ottumwa, Indianola, or Marshalltown moving down a class, good luck. The smallest 4-A school in boys athletics is Western Dubuque with 624 students in grades 9-11. Ottumwa has 953, Indianola 849, and Marshalltown 1066. The only school in the CIML-Metro with a chance would be DSM Hoover with 714 students.
http://www.iahsaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/2013-2014_Enrollments_Numerical.pdf
As for Ottumwa, Indianola, or Marshalltown moving down a class, good luck. The smallest 4-A school in boys athletics is Western Dubuque with 624 students in grades 9-11. Ottumwa has 953, Indianola 849, and Marshalltown 1066. The only school in the CIML-Metro with a chance would be DSM Hoover with 714 students.
Color me skeptical. It just seems lopsided when schools of 1300 to 1500 enrollment are playing against schools of 700-800. I grew up in a small town, but live in a large one. The talent pool to draw from is half in some cases and it shows on the fields / courts. Ridiculous.
As someone who lives around a couple of 3A Districts in Decorah and Howard-Winneshiek (Cresco), the idea of those schools playing against the Ottumwas and Marshalltowns of the world seems a lot less fair than the Ottumwas and Marshalltowns of the world playing the DSM schools.
My high school in MN played up even though we had the smallest enrollment of any 5A school. Next year the entire state is changing based on enrollment and geography and you'll schedule your games against people only in your district. That seems good to me - wish Iowa was like that.
Ottumwa and Marshalltown would fit quite nicely in the Little Hawkeye Conference which is somewhat of a high-level 3A conference:
Pella
Norwalk
Dallas-Center Grimes
Pella Christian
Oskaloosa
Newton
Grinnell
Ottumwa?
Marashaltown?
Indianola?
As someone who graduated from a school in the NCC, there's a new one now? When did that happen?
Bishop Garrigan and Eagle Grove are leaving for the North Iowa Conference I think starting this fall. North Iowa Conference next year is adding the Cornbowl Conference for an 18 team disaster. I think the NCC will just be 8 teams now but I could be wrong.
This is stupid.
First off, the schedules won't change. Just because Ottumwa joins this conference, they will still play the small 2A and 3A schools, and they will still play the big schools as well.
At the same time, Marshalltown is willing to leave the strongest conference in the state because they feel they don't have a strong enough voice in the CIML. That is like Iowa State leaving the Big 12 for the MAC because they feel they don't have enough say in the Big 12.
First off, the schedules won't change. Just because Ottumwa joins this conference, they will still play the small 2A and 3A schools, and they will still play the big schools as well.
At the same time, Marshalltown is willing to leave the strongest conference in the state because they feel they don't have a strong enough voice in the CIML. That is like Iowa State leaving the Big 12 for the MAC because they feel they don't have enough say in the Big 12.
Interesting. Wonder if the dwindling attendance at those schools as a lot to do with the move. I've heard rumblings from people still connect with athletics at my old high school that Bishop Garrigan has been hit hard with enrollment drops. Which is surprising since in the past they have always fielded teams that competed with the bigger schools in the conference (Clear Lake, Algona High, Webster City, Hampton Dumont).
They're ahead of their time. They're breaking apart a super conference. One complaint was being in a conference within the conference in that article. Wonder when we'll see the ACC, SEC, and Big 10 go down that path.
BG Grad :wink: Enrollment hasn't really gone down much. The baseball team and golf teams have had success in the NCC but no other sport has really had any success so that's why the NIC move was looked at. I always saw it as an advantage for us playing against bigger schools during conference games and then against 1A schools in districts.
From Indianola's perspective, I'd love to see that happen. It seems to me that as a town and as a school district, Indianola has a lot more in common with those towns and schools than it does with the metro area schools. Throw in Knoxville and Winterset as other possible additions.
The only sports Mtown cares about is soccer, and sometimes baseball. I think you could cut the football and basketball programs and the collective town would go, 'meh'.
I remember when that conference had Waukee in it (originally as one of the smallest members, but, yeah, haha, things change). I remember when I was in high school Boone was in it, too, but, yeah, there's one where the conference headed up and Boone headed down. I know Boone used to be 4A back at some point (like in the 1970s) and used to compete with the DSM schools in football at that classification, but that changed a long time ago.
I think you still want conferences for high schools simple on the grounds it makes scheduling a lot easier. Lot easier to make things work in a round-robin of pools of 8-12 than in some big grid of a couple hundred schools (or, at least, a couple dozen schools per classification).
I kind of think it's funny how the "super-conference" in Iowa is already falling apart because of competitive imbalances, awkward distances for high school students (which have to use buses) and families to travel, and just generally divergent goals and philosophies (lot easier for the DSM area schools to feel a connection to each other than, say, 50% of the DSM schools with 50% of the Avenue of the Saints schools). Might be a little test case for how some of the larger NCAA conference might end up? Granted, I think the SEC/B10 are probably stable enough at 14, but much more than that and I can see some N/S E/W or top/bottom divides starting to develop down the line for just these same competitive and geographical reasons.