9th. Proposal Presented

Thursday's OSAA Redistricting Committee meeting and Moday's OSAA Executive Board meetings bring the look of leagues for the 2010-2014 four year time block more into focus.

The 9th. proposal (maps) of the redistricting committee made a few adjustments, mostly based on updated enrollment numbers, and reaffirmed the coming of the concept of Hybrid leagues.

The significant development in 5A is the failure of a proposal by the Northwest Oregon League to stay together as a 5A/6A hybrid. Instead, a new "Greater Metro League", combining the remaining west-side teams from the NWOC with Milwaukie, Parkrose, Sandy, and Putnam, has been proposed.

And Glencoe, Hillsboro, Century, and Liberty, though they are still 5A sized, will move to the 6A Pacific Conference, and McMinnville will become the out-of-town opponent for the Salem-Keizer Schools

The end of Salem-Keizer schools crossing the Santiam pass on a regular basis seems certain, with Redmond destined for their ole home in the Intermountain Conference, now as the only non-5A member.

The PIL will remain a district specific league, though the teams will be sprinkled across three classes.

The Midwestern League also takes on a Hybrid form of its former self.

The final meeting of the Classification and Districting Committee will be held Monday, September 28, at 9 AM, at the Shriners Building Auditorium, across the street from the OSAA office in Wilsonville.

Prior to that time, member schools and others interested can respond in writing to the proposal, and at the meeting, in person. Afterwards, the committee will finalize their recommendation, which will be considered by the Executive Board and the Delegate Assembly at an October 26 meeting, to be held at the Doubletree-Lloyd Center in Portland.

The full text of the proposal is here.

The Executive Board, while not directly involved with the process at this point, did take some actions, or more notably, chose not to take actions, involving several applications to "play down" in the coming years, which affects the schools in various classes, and the logistics of league composition.

Eight schools, including Crow, Days Creek, Eagle Point, Gervais, Molalla, Neah-Kah-Nie, Pacific and Riverside, petitioned to the Executive Board to play down for the four year time block starting with the 2010-11 school year. Molalla and Neah-Kah-Nie were subsequently excluded from the process after their enrollment numbers had dropped sufficiently to allow them to play in their preferred classification without special dispensation..

But among the other schools that petitioned, only Pacific, which was petitioning to stay in Class 1A, was acted upon and passed unanimously by the board. And the board approved Pacific's appeal for reasons of geography rather than enrollment.

The latest proposals generally appear to provide improvements to both competition and travel considerations, and restore some old natural arrangement, while eliminating others. But the real test will come when the Championship committee begins to wrestle with the issue of playoff qualifications out of some of the hybrids, most notably the Intermountain, where Redmond is the only 6A school east of the mountains, and the PIL, with two 4A and two 6A members, though the two 2A members of the Sunset pose a similar challenge. How anything remotely close to remotely equitable performance requirements for playoff qualification will be achieved will be interesting, and may prove to be a challenge exceeding both the move to six classes, and this restructuring.

CC

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