Almost There

[Bisonguy06]

So there are 12 schools between 200 and 650. Eight schools between 250 and 650.

I've said North Dakota doesn't have enough of a 'middle' for a three class system or something similar. That's what I'm referring to.

[BB11]

Following are the numbers from the NDHSAA. They had listed a total of 168 High Schools in ND for the 2012-13 school year. They also had listed 128 total teams. 18 of those were class A with enrollment of 325+ with Shanley at 224 opting up. There were 53 schools that enrollment needed to be adjusted due to 7-12 listing or 10-12 listing.

West Fargo 1994
Bismarck High School 1867
Minot 1850
Bismarck Century 1625
Fargo Davies 1140
Fargo South 1100
Grand Forks Red River 1097
Mandan 1015
Fargo North 1010
Grand Forks Central 884
Williston 755
Dickinson 731
Jamestown 670
Turtle Mountain Community 513
Devils Lake 505
Wahpeton 385
Valley City 356
Bismarck St. Marys 340
Shanley 224


Grafton 274
Central Cass 260
Standing Rock 241
Beulah 224
Watford City 220
Kindred 211
Lisbon 197
Bottineau 195
Bishop Ryan 194
Hillsboro/Central Valley 192
Rugby 192
Carrington 188
Hazen 185
New Town 180
Stanley 173
Four Winds/Minnewaukan 172
Northern Cass 170
Oakes 170
Des Lacs-Burlington 167
Dickinson Trinity 164
Harvey-Wells County 164
Heart River 160
May-Port/Clifford-Galesburg 156
Larimore 155
LaMoure-Litchville/Marion 150
Park River/Fordville-Lankin 149
Hatton/Northwood 148
Linton/Hazelton-Moffit-Braddock 141
Bowman County 139
Midway-Minto 136
Killdeer 135
Surrey 135
North Border 133
Oak Grove 133
Thompson 132
Dunseith 131
Langdon Area 129
Finley-Sharon/Hope-Page 122
Hettinger/Scranton 122
Kidder County 120
New Rockford-Sheyenne 116
Glen Ullin/Hebron 114
Benson County 112
Wyndmere/Lidgerwood 112
Beach 111
Cavalier 111
Garrison 109
St. John 109
Drayton/Valley-Edinburg 106
Towner Granville Upham 106
Lewis & Clark -Berthold 104
New Salem-Almont 104
Velva 100
South Border 99
Wilton-Wing 97
Lakota/Adams-Edmore 95
Ellendale 94
MLS Mohall/Sherwood 94
Parshall 94
Edgeley-Kulm 93
Tioga 92
Barnes County North 91
Kenmare 91
Enderlin 90
Griggs County Central 90
Shiloh Christian 90
North Star 89
Richland 89
Ray 88
Central Prairie 87
Napoleon 86
Grant County 85
Hankinson 85
Dakota Prairie 84
Richardton-Taylor 84
Strasburg/Zeeland 84
Washburn 80
Glenburn 79
Maple Valley 78
Rolla 77
Divide County 76
Flasher 72
Turtle Lake-Mercer/McClusky 69
Mott-Regent 68
Rolette/Wolford 67
Our Redeemer's 66
North Sargent 65
Trenton 65
Center-Stanton 64
Max 64
Underwood 60
Warwick 60
Sargent Central 58
Westhope-Newburg 58
Drake/Anamoose 56
Milnor 56
Pingree-Buchanan/Kensal 56
Trinity Christian 56
Solen 55
New England 54
Burke County 50
Munich/Starkweather 49
Mandaree 44
Sawyer 44
Midkota 40
White Shield 39
Lewis & Clark, North Shore 38
Campbell-Tintah-Fairmount 34
Powers Lake 34
2013 - 128 Total Teams

I'm too lazy to look it up, plus the NCAA's are on - but just going by memory from the last 10 years in Class B BOYS basketball - Not too up on the girls - someone else will be though. Here is what I surmised.
The top 25 schools in size as listed above have made the Class B Boys Tourney 27 times in the last 10 years.
The bottom 25 schools in size as listed above have made the Class B Boys Tourney 11 times in the last 10 years.
Please, if I am way off-base - someone can correct me - like I said - I'm just going off of memory, and I could be off by a few each way.
Don't know if there was a point to my musing - I just found it interesting.

[B-oldtimer]

I went through list of schools above for girls basketball and then went through last 10 years of state tournament the top 25 schools went 24 times in last 10 years and bottom 25 schools went zero times. The top 25 schools 16 of the 25 have made the tournament in last 10 years. I then did bottom half of the list and in this group the schools have gone 9 times and two of the schools are at near midpoint they accounted for 6 times of the 9 times bottom schools went to state. This sure looks to me that size matters on weather you make it to state. It what i said the large class b schools don't want to change when there odds are so in favor of them appearing in state tournament. I think the boys side is little more balanced but i think if it continues way it is now in 5 years its going to be mirroring the girls numbers we see now. The problem is that total number of teams it probably not feasible now to have 3 class system but numbers bear out range in size in class b is having effect on fair competiton. I guess politics of it is that small schools are to bare the brundt of this because the other way would be lower size of class a enrollment down and move the top 15 to 25 B schools to A and let them struggle trying to compete with those schools.
I just think were going to struggle to get participation from kids when they see this unequal level of competition and also sure going to loose the fans interest along the way.

[Bisonguy06]

Your 2013 B boys champions were the Milnor Bison, enrollment 56. Milnor is 115th in enrollment of the 128 schools.

Three of the last seven B boys champions are schools with enrollment under 100 (Parshall, North Star, Milnor)

[Bisonguy06]

On the girls side, both Kidder County (120) and Beach (112) have won state titles within the last five years.

[ndlionsfan]

Going to state should not be the only barometer to judge success. Just looking at the bottom enrollments powers lake, midkota, New England, westhope, milnor, Warwick, Trenton, mr, Tlm, flasher, north Sargent, and rolla have all had success and been very competitive in the last few years in either boys, girls, or even both. All of these schools are under 75 which I consider very small

[ndlionsfan]

On the other hand you basically have to go down 30 teams from the top to find a school who hasn't had success and been competitive in either boys, girls, or both.

[Indy5]

I've seen a couple posts listing Ryan's enrollment at 196. I promise you it's not over 160. I don't know freshmen or sophmore classes but I believe the freshmen class is around 25-35 and the sophmores are 35-50. I know the seniors have 26 and the juniors have 41. If you take the high end of my estimations for the lower grades, you still only get 152 and I'd lean towards the lower numbers which would give you 127.

[Run4Fun2009]

I've seen a couple posts listing Ryan's enrollment at 196. I promise you it's not over 160. I don't know freshmen or sophmore classes but I believe the freshmen class is around 25-35 and the sophmores are 35-50. I know the seniors have 26 and the juniors have 41. If you take the high end of my estimations for the lower grades, you still only get 152 and I'd lean towards the lower numbers which would give you 127.

When I asked around earlier in the year I had Bishop Ryan at 141 and Oak Grove at 110. Those are two numbers that I know are wrong in a previous post

[Bisonguy06]

Going to state should not be the only barometer to judge success. Just looking at the bottom enrollments powers lake, midkota, New England, westhope, milnor, Warwick, Trenton, mr, Tlm, flasher, north Sargent, and rolla have all had success and been very competitive in the last few years in either boys, girls, or even both. All of these schools are under 75 which I consider very small

Correct - the Powers Lake boys won their district tournament this year, beating Trenton in the championship game. PL got upset in the first round of the regional tournament. Trenton won the region and finished 3rd at state.

Powers Lake is the smallest school in the state, based on high school enrollment.

[B-oldtimer]

region 8 tournament Powers lake 34, Northshore 38, Trenton 64, Tioga 92, Parshall 94, White Shield 39, Ray 88, Watford city 220. This region had mostly very small schools except for Watford City and I know Watford City has junior gold hockey like Langdon does and when you have that it depletes basketball in small town class b school. Also this region i believe enrollment numbers are up some for larger class b schools because of oil boom but they haven't seen up tick in activities participation numbers corresponding to enrollments yet. This region odds were in favor of small schoo advancing through to state tournament looking at participants. But look at girls side one the largest schools in region advanced to state tournament in Newtown. If size didn't matter statistically we should have balanced state tournament with all sizes being represented equally over 10 year period and like have shown above that is not happening. Yes we get one or two small teams doing well in a given tournament but numbers for girls point out that size does matter. In boys its been more balanced but but i think trend is going to larger schools with one small school that does well in the tournament.

[Bisonguy06]

B Oldtimer, some of the things you're saying make sense to me. Here's one thing that doesn't make sense - the notion of a 'balanced state tournament with all sizes being represented equally.'

You could divide ND up into 3, 5, or 10 classes, and that would never, ever happen.

Over the long haul, you should EXPECT a larger school to have more success than a smaller school in the same division. Bismarck High makes it to state more often than Dickinson High does. That doesn't mean the system is broken. It means the system isn't perfect. It means we don't live in a utopia where every school has an equal enrollment and schools simply take turns advancing to state in some perfect rotation. Dickinson High doesn't need a third division added. Neither does Milnor.

I've never seen anyone try to make the argument that size of school makes no difference. Of course it does. But size of school has not disqualified any school from winning regional and state championships in North Dakota. Shanley won the A boys this year, and Milnor won the B boys. They are among the smallest schools in the current divisions. Our current divisions must be working.

[B-oldtimer]

I know that nothing is perfect and never will be obtained but i guess my area of beef is that we have gotten to point of that top tier size in class b it's not if but when they go to state when and how many times they will be at state. When i was young going to state was once in generation type of thing and sure there were teams that went maybe two times in row and rare time 3 times to state but it was because of young talent that repeated to state. Now if you look at the top 10to 15 go to state several times in ten year period plus you add in parochials from large class A towns its gotten wayout balance. In 1970's and 80's largest class b school were bunched into couple of regions where they butting heads to get to state. Region 2 was example of this majority of the schools coming out of region 2 were some of the largest schools in class b and even other schools in that region had good enough numbers to compete with largest schools. It aslo showd in state tournament region 2 was usual a favorite but some other regions were made up smaller class b schools so this set up David and Goliath tournaments.

I think why we need to do something about this because kids are different today in that they will not put up with loosing and if feel they cann't compete they just move on to something else. I can hear people say well its just matter of putting more time and effort but if your short on talent and who competing against can reload again year in and year out thats not easy thing to do. I have already see this in our region we got some schools that haven't had much success in last couple years and you can see participation numbers have dropped. The participation drops and solution is to coop and we keep doing this until there are just a few teams participating. The quality of play has improved but we lost small town competition and that is what made class b it is today. In rural nd when teams get to be made up too many schools and towns the interest drops because it doesn't have vested interest it did when fans could identify who was competing and felt team was from their town or community. Also teams they are competing against doesn't have that same level interest it has when its the traditional rivals schools have had for years.

I think going to state tournament shouldn't happen very often for anyone it should be something that happens once or twice in generation so it truly is something special going to state. If this could be obtained i think this would be what considered as fair a system as could be had. I hope this explains to you bisonguy 06 why I have been on enrollment size i want system that doesn't have where this top 15 plus parochials are going to state as often as we have had in last 10 years and i want little more balance in that bottom half of enrollments makes it a few more times to state than we had.

[classB4ever]

I've seen a couple posts listing Ryan's enrollment at 196. I promise you it's not over 160. I don't know freshmen or sophmore classes but I believe the freshmen class is around 25-35 and the sophmores are 35-50. I know the seniors have 26 and the juniors have 41. If you take the high end of my estimations for the lower grades, you still only get 152 and I'd lean towards the lower numbers which would give you 127.

When I asked around earlier in the year I had Bishop Ryan at 141 and Oak Grove at 110. Those are two numbers that I know are wrong in a previous post

Bishop Ryan High School
Address: 316 11th Ave. NW, Minot, ND 58703

Phone: 701-852-4004 ~ Fax: 701-839-4651
Grades 9-12...................................... 194 students for 2012-2013


Oak Grove
Address: 124 N Terrace, Fargo, ND 58102

Phone: 701-237-0210 ~ Fax: 701-237-4217
Grades 7-12...................................... 199 students for 2012-2013


Taken directly from NDHSAA website. Adjusting Oak Groves for 9-12 yields .67 x 199 => 133. When comparing enrollment there has to be some starting point for discussion. Would think that the NDHSAA numbers would be a good starting place.

[Run4Fun2009]

I've seen a couple posts listing Ryan's enrollment at 196. I promise you it's not over 160. I don't know freshmen or sophmore classes but I believe the freshmen class is around 25-35 and the sophmores are 35-50. I know the seniors have 26 and the juniors have 41. If you take the high end of my estimations for the lower grades, you still only get 152 and I'd lean towards the lower numbers which would give you 127.

When I asked around earlier in the year I had Bishop Ryan at 141 and Oak Grove at 110. Those are two numbers that I know are wrong in a previous post

Bishop Ryan High School
Address: 316 11th Ave. NW, Minot, ND 58703

Phone: 701-852-4004 ~ Fax: 701-839-4651
Grades 9-12...................................... 194 students for 2012-2013


Oak Grove
Address: 124 N Terrace, Fargo, ND 58102

Phone: 701-237-0210 ~ Fax: 701-237-4217
Grades 7-12...................................... 199 students for 2012-2013


Taken directly from NDHSAA website. Adjusting Oak Groves for 9-12 yields .67 x 199 => 133. When comparing enrollment there has to be some starting point for discussion. Would think that the NDHSAA numbers would be a good starting place.

NDHSAA numbers aren't always right...I know for Oak Grove 199 is their 6-12 enrollment number. Their senior class has only 24 kids in it. Under your adjusting system shown above it would yield: .571 x 199 => 114.

I know the Hoopster had Bishop Ryan down around the 140 range and the number I was told at the beginning of the year was also in that range.

[classB4ever]

NDHSAA numbers aren't always right...I know for Oak Grove 199 is their 6-12 enrollment number. Their senior class has only 24 kids in it. Under your adjusting system shown above it would yield: .571 x 199 => 114.

I know the Hoopster had Bishop Ryan down around the 140 range and the number I was told at the beginning of the year was also in that range.

My bad. I was thinking the North Dakota High School Activities Association would be fairly reliable since it is oversees the activities for its member schools. If I get some spare time, will redo the list using the Hoopster.

[ndlionsfan]

I don't understand how difficult it is to find enrollments for the private schools. You would think that the NDHSAA is reliable since the schools have to report to them for classification of sports. You would also think that they DPI site is reliable. But current students and alum don't even know exactly how many kids are in their school. The Hoopster isn't that reliable since it is just the coaches submitting the number with their outlook for the season.

I'm not saying anyone is right or wrong here, just can't understand how their can be so many (and such a wide variation) or enrollment numbers for these schools.

[heimer]

It's too bad this debate took the bait from Bisonguy and de-evolved into a bickering of 5 students here and there.

This is how the koom bye yah stays in business.

Football works better than any sport we have right now, and no one can tell me the cutoff number for classification in football. There isn't one. The board saw fit to group schools of like size together for classification.

Bisonguy claims there is no middle. There is clearly a middle, until you do the following:

Make up phantom numbers you think are fair for classification
Make up phantom minimum sizes of classes for the title to have any meaning
Make up stories about how the current system has worked forever.

Fact: Football has demonstrated a higher percentage of competitive regular season games than any of our team vs team sports.

Fact: Bismarck doesn't feel any better about their state football titles because there were 11 competitive teams and 4 Patsy's in their class than they would if they just had the 11 teams.

Fact: the current system of basketball is less than 25 years old.

Fact: there is a clear middle. Just look at the football plan.

There is no middle if you think it takes 30 teams for a competitive class. Tell someone who has won a state title at the AAA or AA level of football that their title is meaningless because their class has only 16 teams. How about we send Velva or Shanley or Grafton to the Community Bowl for a game with the Demons and we will see how meaningless that AAA title is.

In the end, it comes down to Bisonguys numbers of comparison of like schools, pulled completely out of his own a....., um, thin air, or a tangible grouping of schools that I have put forward. You can argue about no middle all day long if you say one group is 250-650, and someone says it should be 200-500, or 150-400, etc. This is exactly what's wrong with 325 being grandfathered into the constitution. It's why B fans on this thread are beginning to talk about 200 and up as A.

There is no arguing 16, then 16, then the rest. I'd even take a combined AA-A tournament with just coverage of the title day on TV (girls A title, boys A title, girls AA title, boys AA title) over what we have right now. There is a perfect amount of flexibility for demographic changes with this type of plan. There is none with 325, or any other enrollment range crap thrown out there.

My plan works with what we have. Bisonguy doesn't use what we have to make a counter. He points at what we don't have. The guy who uses what he has gets off the island. The other guy dies. Keep it at 325. I'll start work on the tombstone. One person already said attendance among big B schools at the state B is dropping. Tough to get behind a team that plays 4 or 5 big games a regular season and glides through two rounds of districts. It's good they get upset once in a while. We get one good week in March after a yawn of Dcember, January, and February. Eh, who needs 13 great weeks when the peasants will stomach 1 at the end after 12 weeks of crap?

[Indy5]

Heimer, I posted this in the boys thread. This is why we can't compare football and basketball.

I hate how everyone is using football as an example for more classes. In football, you play once a week and always play on fridays, sometimes saturdays. Therefore smaller numbers are fine since you play 9 games instead of 19. And when you get back at 1 in the morning it's not a big deal because there isn't school the next day.

[Bisonguy06]

It's too bad this debate took the bait from Bisonguy and de-evolved into a bickering of 5 students here and there.

This is how the koom bye yah stays in business.

Football works better than any sport we have right now, and no one can tell me the cutoff number for classification in football. There isn't one. The board saw fit to group schools of like size together for classification.

Bisonguy claims there is no middle. There is clearly a middle, until you do the following:

Make up phantom numbers you think are fair for classification
Make up phantom minimum sizes of classes for the title to have any meaning
Make up stories about how the current system has worked forever.

Fact: Football has demonstrated a higher percentage of competitive regular season games than any of our team vs team sports.

Fact: Bismarck doesn't feel any better about their state football titles because there were 11 competitive teams and 4 Patsy's in their class than they would if they just had the 11 teams.

Fact: the current system of basketball is less than 25 years old.

Fact: there is a clear middle. Just look at the football plan.

There is no middle if you think it takes 30 teams for a competitive class. Tell someone who has won a state title at the AAA or AA level of football that their title is meaningless because their class has only 16 teams. How about we send Velva or Shanley or Grafton to the Community Bowl for a game with the Demons and we will see how meaningless that AAA title is.

In the end, it comes down to Bisonguys numbers of comparison of like schools, pulled completely out of his own a....., um, thin air, or a tangible grouping of schools that I have put forward. You can argue about no middle all day long if you say one group is 250-650, and someone says it should be 200-500, or 150-400, etc. This is exactly what's wrong with 325 being grandfathered into the constitution. It's why B fans on this thread are beginning to talk about 200 and up as A.

There is no arguing 16, then 16, then the rest. I'd even take a combined AA-A tournament with just coverage of the title day on TV (girls A title, boys A title, girls AA title, boys AA title) over what we have right now. There is a perfect amount of flexibility for demographic changes with this type of plan. There is none with 325, or any other enrollment range crap thrown out there.

My plan works with what we have. Bisonguy doesn't use what we have to make a counter. He points at what we don't have. The guy who uses what he has gets off the island. The other guy dies. Keep it at 325. I'll start work on the tombstone. One person already said attendance among big B schools at the state B is dropping. Tough to get behind a team that plays 4 or 5 big games a regular season and glides through two rounds of districts. It's good they get upset once in a while. We get one good week in March after a yawn of Dcember, January, and February. Eh, who needs 13 great weeks when the peasants will stomach 1 at the end after 12 weeks of crap?

Heimer, you're right. Well, not about the main topic at hand, but you're right that the thread got taken away from you and it's your turn to run with it for awhile.

I didn't post the enrollment of ND's schools. Someone else did. I just analyzed the data.

I didn't script the state B boys tournament. I just watched it and repeated the results back to you. (I could not have possibly scripted a tournament any better than the actual 2013 B boys tourney to support the case for two classes in ND)

It's time for you to take the thread and run with it. After all, you have your work cut out for you. All I have to do is read actual tournament results and school enrollments back to you. Basically, you have to convince everyone of these two things:

1) The last 5-7 years of class B basketball never happened in North Dakota. Ignore/disregard the results. They are some sort of optical illusion.
2) You've got a magical plan that will take several schools out of class B basketball off the top end, while we continue to lose schools and teams at the bottom end due to closures and co-ops, and somehow the result will be a bigger, better class B.

[old#63]

Grafton's AA football travel times.

Devils Lake 104 miles 2 hours
Cooperstown 113 miles 2.25 hours
Fargo Shanley 121 miles 2.25 hours
Casselton 131 miles 2.25 hours
Kindred 150 miles 2.5 hours
Wahpeton 176 miles 2.75 hours
Valley City 178 miles 3 hours
Lisbon 191 miles 3.25 hours

[winner-within]

It's too bad this debate took the bait from Bisonguy and de-evolved into a bickering of 5 students here and there.

This is how the koom bye yah stays in business.

Football works better than any sport we have right now, and no one can tell me the cutoff number for classification in football. There isn't one. The board saw fit to group schools of like size together for classification.

Bisonguy claims there is no middle. There is clearly a middle, until you do the following:

Make up phantom numbers you think are fair for classification
Make up phantom minimum sizes of classes for the title to have any meaning
Make up stories about how the current system has worked forever.

Fact: Football has demonstrated a higher percentage of competitive regular season games than any of our team vs team sports.

Fact: Bismarck doesn't feel any better about their state football titles because there were 11 competitive teams and 4 Patsy's in their class than they would if they just had the 11 teams.

Fact: the current system of basketball is less than 25 years old.

Fact: there is a clear middle. Just look at the football plan.

There is no middle if you think it takes 30 teams for a competitive class. Tell someone who has won a state title at the AAA or AA level of football that their title is meaningless because their class has only 16 teams. How about we send Velva or Shanley or Grafton to the Community Bowl for a game with the Demons and we will see how meaningless that AAA title is.

In the end, it comes down to Bisonguys numbers of comparison of like schools, pulled completely out of his own a....., um, thin air, or a tangible grouping of schools that I have put forward. You can argue about no middle all day long if you say one group is 250-650, and someone says it should be 200-500, or 150-400, etc. This is exactly what's wrong with 325 being grandfathered into the constitution. It's why B fans on this thread are beginning to talk about 200 and up as A.

There is no arguing 16, then 16, then the rest. I'd even take a combined AA-A tournament with just coverage of the title day on TV (girls A title, boys A title, girls AA title, boys AA title) over what we have right now. There is a perfect amount of flexibility for demographic changes with this type of plan. There is none with 325, or any other enrollment range crap thrown out there.

My plan works with what we have. Bisonguy doesn't use what we have to make a counter. He points at what we don't have. The guy who uses what he has gets off the island. The other guy dies. Keep it at 325. I'll start work on the tombstone. One person already said attendance among big B schools at the state B is dropping. Tough to get behind a team that plays 4 or 5 big games a regular season and glides through two rounds of districts. It's good they get upset once in a while. We get one good week in March after a yawn of Dcember, January, and February. Eh, who needs 13 great weeks when the peasants will stomach 1 at the end after 12 weeks of crap?

theres no middle

[B-oldtimer]

Yes there's a middle group of schools but numbers and scope of travel is the problem we have in North Dakota to feasibly run a different class of basketball. We do it in football but thats where you play once a week and usually on Friday. It not as difficult on kids with not school following the next day. If we did play another class or subset of B i think it would be all class b schools would continue to play each other given region and when you got to tournament time larger or middle class would play in seperate regions and rest in another region tournament and state tournament would be run together with maybe champions playing off against each other possiblility. Like say difficulty is scope of travel and coordinating tournaments and also the cutoff where the middle would be for number of teams. If its like football you would have so manny teams in that middle class and enrollment size would only matter determining where you are at on list and top number teams would come from that list. I think there are alot of ideas out there to solve this problem and i wish it was being discussed at activities association. Its something thats need to be discussed and here it is important that equal representation from top to bottom is involved in this discussion.

[heimer]

Winner: Well-thought-out reply. You're every Class B administrator's dream. By the way, saw your post on the boys thread about how A teams would have trouble competing in the B tournament. This year's B champ finished two spots behind the 10th place team in the EDC at their lone combined tourney. If you want Shanley, call them up and let the blood-letting begin.

Bisonguy: I don't have to pretend anything didn't happen. Keep pointing at your koom bye yah as your lone shread of proof. I have teams constantly being denied spots in regional tournaments by big Bs. You show me a year that Grafton, Central Cass, Oak Grove, Carrington, Watford City, etc, etc, don't make regionals, then we'll talk.

Oh, and here we go, lets pull out the travel argument! Wonderful. I just saw East Grand Forks, a Minnesota 3A team, play a regular season game against WAO, a 1A team, in the regular season, with no objections from either side. Wow, that was hard. The only reason Grafton would not play Cavalier anymore would be Grafton's choice, not Cavalier's. Same with Central Cass not playing Maple Valley. Travel certainly is not trivial, but in your 7-team region of a Super 2, you'd be on the road three times one year and four the next to fill your regional commitments. Then, the rest of the schedule is yours. Lets weep for travel for Grafton, when they would travel 5 hours to Bismarck for an invite is so blew the popular breeze.

I love the changing direction of this thread. There's no middle enrollment, travel is too hard, there's too much change, everything is just fine, it's worked for 50 years, etc. etc. Sand, meet head, can I spend some time in you? That's basically your combined position.

[winner-within]

Winner: Well-thought-out reply. You're every Class B administrator's dream. By the way, saw your post on the boys thread about how A teams would have trouble competing in the B tournament. This year's B champ finished two spots behind the 10th place team in the EDC at their lone combined tourney. If you want Shanley, call them up and let the blood-letting begin.

Bisonguy: I don't have to pretend anything didn't happen. Keep pointing at your koom bye yah as your lone shread of proof. I have teams constantly being denied spots in regional tournaments by big Bs. You show me a year that Grafton, Central Cass, Oak Grove, Carrington, Watford City, etc, etc, don't make regionals, then we'll talk.

Oh, and here we go, lets pull out the travel argument! Wonderful. I just saw East Grand Forks, a Minnesota 3A team, play a regular season game against WAO, a 1A team, in the regular season, with no objections from either side. Wow, that was hard. The only reason Grafton would not play Cavalier anymore would be Grafton's choice, not Cavalier's. Same with Central Cass not playing Maple Valley. Travel certainly is not trivial, but in your 7-team region of a Super 2, you'd be on the road three times one year and four the next to fill your regional commitments. Then, the rest of the schedule is yours. Lets weep for travel for Grafton, when they would travel 5 hours to Bismarck for an invite is so blew the popular breeze.

I love the changing direction of this thread. There's no middle enrollment, travel is too hard, there's too much change, everything is just fine, it's worked for 50 years, etc. etc. Sand, meet head, can I spend some time in you? That's basically your combined position.

I'd put Beulah up against Shanley with Dave Nelson coaching them (Buelah) and in 25 games they'ed split.....its all perspective