Talkin' Sports, Madison-Style: Realignment Musical Chairs

With the bulk of high school sports now officially in the books, athletic directors, coaches, and the SDHSAA are now gearing up for next school year. Already, the state has released the football schedule... and it looks like the Bulldogs will get to be "Road Warriors" again with their first two games on the road... Hot Springs in the first game, then to Sisseton!

Who the heck comes up with these schedules, the Marquis de Sade?!?

Anyway, I'm starting to drift already (it's Friday, there's a certain amount of drift allowed). What I wanted to talk about is something that comes up every two years. And no, I'm not talking about Gerry Lange's campaign... I'm talking about something that could be just as political.

Reclassification and Realignment.

Okay, for those of you who are not informed, let me give you the Cliff Notes version. Every two years, the SDHSAA reclassifies its member schools based on their enrollment numbers. In the past it was a straight-on head count, but now they use something called Average Daily Membership or ADM, which is fairly straightforward... the average number of students in grades 8-11 that are attending school in a particular day.

Now as we all know, school numbers fluctuate. Students move in, students leave, big classes, small classes, etc. So the state has to try and keep the classifications up-to-date. They reclassify every two years, since most games are contracted on a two-year basis. I could go on and on, but then I'd REALLY bore you to tears!

No changes for Madison this next year. The school will remain a Class "A" school. Several area schools will fluctuate, though. Great Plains Lutheran in Watertown will move up to Class "A" for most sports, while Elkton-Lake Benton will also bump up to Class "A" after being a "B" school for a couple of years. Chester will also bump up to "A" as well.

So with all these schools moving up and down the classification ladder, such things like districts and regions have to be realigned. So the SDHSAA has come up with the proposed realignments. Of course, there's always gonig to be some tweaking as school districts finalize things like co-operative agreements and the like, but it should be carved in stone by the end of May.

How this affects Madison? Well, here's the current district and region alignment for basketball and volleyball...

Region 3

District 5           District 6

Madison            Sioux Falls Christian

Flandreau          Dell Rapids Public

FIS                   Garretson

Howard             Baltic

Under the new Alignment, here's how these districts will look. (new teams in red)

Region 3

District 5                 District 6

Madison                  Sioux Falls Christian

Flandreau                Dell Rapids Public

FIS                         Garretson

Elkton-Lake Benton   Baltic

Howard would move into District 9, which would also include Tri-Valley, West Central and Chester.

There's usually a fair amount of cajoling and wheeling and dealing before everything is all said and done... hmm... kinda like Pierre or DC! But I kid. It should make things interesting next year.

And if you're interested, here's the link for the proposed alignments.

http://www.sdhsaa.com/2009-10%20Proposed%20Alignments.pdf.

Don't Touch That Dial!