(Boone) Throughout the week we’ve been presenting information on the Iowa High School Athletic Association’s set up for classifying teams. So is it time for a change from a strictly enrollment based system? Does the movement have enough push to lead to a change??
Glidden-Ralston coach Cole Corson believes his crusade to level the playing field is gaining some ground, even if just slightly. “I’ve talked to the state a couple of times and was supposed to have a meeting with the classification committee about how I came up with my numbers. It’s getting a little more traction. Des Moines Public Schools had their issue with it and said to the state something needs to be done. If you get Des Moines Public Schools on board with something then the state starts to listen a little bit more than just to a little 1A coach in West Central Iowa. I’m not saying private schools recruit or public schools recruit for open-enrollment, it’s more numbers based and the data that goes along with it.”
Iowa High School Athletic Association Director Tom Keating stated previously this week that the association has had open ears. “If I was convinced that we could extract one specific factor for success and use that for a calculating formula I’d be all for it, but we know that there are different factors and those factors don’t all have the same exact impact on the program.”
Corson would like to see a Class 5A, which is something the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union has implemented in the last ten years. This would help avoid situations where schools are competing against other schools that are twice their size. “Adding a class regardless if we get a multiplier, I think the girls with five classes helps immensely separate some of these things. You have a 2,000+ enrollment Valley, West Des Moines playing against a Newton that has 700+ students so that’s two and a half times the size. I tried to condense the classes so there wasn’t as much discrepancy between the top end and the bottom end.”
We’ll put our finishing touches on the series with final thoughts from both Corson and Keating tomorrow.
