NDplayin wrote:I'm opening to considering this Hinsa, although I admit my gut instinct says we'd struggle to make it work. Your point about there being significantly fewer teams is valid. However, what I think you're over looking is that while the number of teams is fewer- the spread of enrollments is larger. West Fargo and Minot are setting new enrollment standards for "big" North Dakota schools, while the smaller schools are getting smaller. So again, while I'm open to considering it, I feel like even though we may have few enough teams to suit three classes... we wouldn't find enrollment ranges that would be reasonable for a competitive atmosphere.
What would you recommend those two enrollment cutoffs be?
Hinsa wrote:When is it time to go back to 3 divisions instead of 4? I wish I had the numbers to back this up, but we have significantly less teams than when we broke out into 4 divisions. I like the idea of solid enrollment cutoffs, just make 2 cutoff points instead of 3.
Using the DPI numbers on the NDHSAA site, I would say this:
AA = 300 and above
A = 80-299
9-man = under 90
Allow opt-ups. Absolutely ZERO opt-downs.
This puts 13 in AA, soon to be 14 when West Fargo splits. Minot should split but who knows if they ever will. Devils Lake is the oddball for any cutoff between the "bigs" and the "mids."
Based on the 2013-14 plan numbers, it puts 39 in A. Why 80? It's about the lower limit of how many boys you need to field a decent 11-man squad. If you get 40% participation, that's 32 kids which is workable but teetering at the point where you start playing younger kids that aren't ready and then they don't want to get beat up and you start losing numbers and the snowball effect kicks in which kills the program.
That leaves 47 in 9-man. As 9-man schools continue to dwindle you could adjust the lower cutoff up to keep a decent number in 9-man, but I would never put the 9-man cutoff any higher than 100. 90 seems about perfect to me but that would put 26 in A and 60 in 9-man which is too big a disparity in my opinion.
There you go, something to chew on. You are right, it is not perfect. Someone will claim they would get screwed in such a plan. But 4 classes for 100 schools? To me that's a worse injustice.