By David Peck
Not so fast. Just a few weeks after it looked like a Wyoming High School Activities Association proposal would have kept Lovell High School in Class 3A for all sports except football over the next two years, the WHSAA board defeated the proposal during a meeting last Tuesday in Casper.
Had the proposal passed, Class 4A would have expanded from 12 to 14 schools, bumping Cody and Jackson Hole to 4A. Class 3A would have remained at 16 schools, but with the 4A shift, Lovell and Kemmerer would have stayed as the smallest schools in 3A, even though they would be passed in projected average daily membership (enrollment) by Mountain View and Thermopolis.
With the proposal’s defeat on an 11-7 vote, however, Cody and Jackson Hole will remain in Class 3A, and Lovell and Kemmerer will drop to Class 2A as everything shifts down. The result will be the return of the Five Rivers Conference featuring Lovell, Rocky Mountain, Greybull, Riverside and Shoshoni for sports like volleyball, golf, cross country, basketball, wrestling and track starting with the 2009-10 school year.
During the summer it looked like Lovell might compete in Class 3A for another two years under a reclassification proposal that had lots of research behind it from work performed by the WHSAA reclassification committee, which is composed of four WHSAA board members and four ad hoc members.
WHSAA president-elect and reclassification board chairman Tim Winland of Rocky Mountain High School said in September that the new proposal had been developed over the past year emphasizing natural breaks in average daily membership along with equity of competition and travel.
The reclassification committee developed the proposed plan last spring, and it was approved at the district level (four quadrants) and then the WHSAA board on first reading in April. Since then, the WHSAA had been awaiting the projected ADM numbers for 2009-10 and 2010-11, which were released in July, before going back out to the districts and WHSAA  board for a vote on second reading.
“It’s pretty easy to pass something on first reading, even if there are some doubts,” Winland said. “It still had to come back for a second reading and the board can see the scrutiny it received and people could hash it out.
“The reclassification committee’s job was to put something out to the districts from a number of different proposals and scenarios. You don’t know how it will truly impact schools until you show them on paper what the numbers are (enrollment), conference alignment and reclassification.
“On first reading the numbers we operated off of were different than what actually came out in the fall.”
In September all four districts voted on the reclassification proposal, and it was defeated 3-1. The Northwest school representatives supported Cody and voted against the plan unanimously, Winland said, and the Northeast didn’t even bring it to a vote because there was no second to a motion to pass the proposal. The Southeast passed the plan by a strong margin, Winland said, but the Southwest narrowly defeated it 7-6. So the proposal went to last week’s WHSAA meeting hanging by a thread.
“In our district Cody would be impacted negatively both in equity of competition and travel,” Winland said. “With us being very familiar with Cody and their situation we pretty much stuck together and defeated it.”
In the Southwest, Green River argued strongly against the proposal in support of Cody, as well, Winland said, arguing that they have found that they cannot schedule Class 3A teams and remain competitive in Class 4A, and if Cody took that stance, it would lose traditional rivalries in the Big Horn Basin.
The Casper meeting
With the districts having had their say, the plan went before the WHSAA last Tuesday in Casper. Before the final vote, however, the WHSAA board wrestled with procedural issues that included advice from the WHSAA attorney, Bob Despain.
Winland said the reclassification committee first took up the proposal Tuesday morning and defeated it 5-3. With that defeat, the reclass committee wondered if the proposal could then remain on the WHSAA agenda. After consulting Despain, WHSAA Commissioner Ron Laird ruled no. The proposal was off the table.
During the open WHSAA meeting that afternoon, however, questions were asked by superintendents who questioned whether the reclassification committee had the power to defeat the plan. After an hour-long debate about procedure and the function of committees, Despain said the board could suspend the rules and if a two-thirds majority of board members voted in favor, the proposal could be placed back on the agenda for second reading, Winland said.
A motion was made to place the proposal back on the agenda, and it did not receive the necessary two-thirds vote. Despain met with the board by conference call. About that time, however, the board realized that the proposal had actually been on the agenda twice – under the reclassification report and under second reading items. The committee decided then to bring the matter to a vote of the full board.
The board debated the issue for about a half an hour, and the argument came down to Cody and Jackson vs. Mountain View and Lyman.
“Mountain View and Lyman wanted it to pass for the same reasons Cody and Jackson wanted it to fail,” Winland said. “(If it failed) they would have to play Cody and Jackson (much larger schools).”
In the end, the board voted against the proposal 11-7, leaving the top 12 teams from Gillette to Riverton in Class 4A, the next 16 from Cody to Thermopolis in Class 3A, the next 20 from Lovell and Kemmerer to Saratoga in Class 2A and the rest in Class 1A.
Football proposal
While the proposal for other sports eventually failed, a proposal for football passed at all stages of the process, Winland said, supported in the districts, approved by the reclassification committee and approved by the board.
The football proposal would drop the current 5A classification and add six-man football for 1A schools who want to participate. Under the plan, the 10 largest schools – from Gillette to Green River -- would play 4A football, all competing against each other in a 10-team super conference.
Riverton would drop to Class 3A, which would include 12 teams, virtually the same teams as the current 4A ranks with the addition of Riverton.
Class 2A would include 16 teams ranging from Pinedale to Wyoming Indian and would include Lovell about midway through the list. Greybull, Tongue River, Big Horn and Wyoming Indian would move up with the larger schools that are currently designated as 3A schools.
The rest of the schools would play in the 1A ranks, including Rocky Mountain, with some playing 11-man football, some forming six-man teams and the rest not playing football. As things look right now, 16 teams would play 11-man football, with eight to 10 playing six-man football.
“It was easy to create scheduling for the top 10 schools,” Winland said. “They will play a nine-game schedule without playing out of state and will play each other. That was looked favorably upon by everybody.”
Sending Riverton down a level was also a popular move, Winland said, with the Wolverines struggling against the big schools in recent years.
There were some concerns about the football proposal, such as including Wyoming Indian competing in 2A with larger schools like Glenrock and Newcastle, Winland said. The real key to the proposal, however, was the six-man football plan. Without it, Winland said, the proposal might have failed.
“Six-man trumped any of the negative aspects of the football proposal,” he said.
With the conferences set, the next big decision centers around conferences. The current proposal from Laird would move Lovell to the 2A West with Big Piney, Pinedale, Kemmerer, Mountain View, Lyman, Greybull and Wyoming Indian, which might opt to play in Class 1A. The 2A East would include most of Lovell’s current conference foes including Wright, Thermopolis, Newcastle, Moorcroft and Glenrock, along with Burns, Big Horn and Tongue River.
Moving to the west would significantly increase Lovell’s travel time for conference games.
Rocky Mountain, meanwhile, is slated to compete in the 1A 11-man West with Burlington, Cokeville, Dubois, Riverside, Saratoga, Shoshoni and Wind River, giving the Grizzlies some long trips for conference games, as well.
Playing in the 1A 11-man East would be Hulett, Lingle, Lusk, Normative Services, Pine Bluffs, Southeast, Sundance and Upton.
Winland said the conference alignment is not set in stone and will be discussed at district meetings on Oct. 15. A final decision will have to be made soon, he said, because scheduling for next year will take place in November.