The landscape of Alaska’s high school athletics is being reshaped.
The rumblings of reclassification have been heard on the horizon since late Fall of 2017. The first quake hit on Monday with a shake-up of football’s three division classification. The aftershock anticipated for Wednesday may prove to be of greater magnitude to the overall high school sports landscape and prove to be of greater impact to individual schools within Alaska.
The Classification Committee, established by the Alaska School Activities Association to re-evaluate the current divisions of extra-curricular activities, was charged with evaluating primarily football, basketball and volleyball with an emphasis on football and 3A/4A basketball.
Realignment of Alaska’s schools in 3A and 4A (the state’s largest divisions) focused on football and basketball.
Six regional board members from across the state, plus representatives from both the Alaska Superintendents Association and the Association of Alaska School Boards made up the committee’s membership.
Discussion included travel costs associated with different classification options, how many football divisions there could be, and whether changing divisions is even an option.
“A lot of these decisions impact the entire state, so the chance of getting a consensus on some of these issues is next to impossible,” said Strickland. “Classification, by its nature, you set some lines to be the largest school in their classification, and someone, unfortunately, has to be the smallest.”
The committee’s recommendations, forwarded to ASAA, were address on Monday, January 29th by the ASAA Board.
Football Classification & Divisions
Overview…
Football divisions will remain unchanged with three division: Division 1, Division II and Division III (formerly Large School, Medium School and Small School).
A combined Juneau/Thunder Mountain team will play in Division I.
Fairbanks schools Lathrop, West Valley and North Pole will play in Division II
New conference alignments within divisions…
Division I
Cook Inlet Conference: West, East, Dimond, Service and South
Railbelt Conference: Bartlett (defending Division I state champion), Chugiak, Colony, Wasilla and Juneau.
Eight of the 10 teams advance to the playoffs; four from each conference.
Division II
Northern Lights Conference: SoHi (defending Division II state champion), Kenai, Kodiak, Eagle River
Railbelt Conference: Palmer, Lathrop, West Valley and North Pole
Top two in each conference advance to the state playoffs.
Division III (remains relatively unchanged):
Division III (small schools)
Greatland Conference: Barrow (defending Division III state champion), Eielson, Houston, Monroe, Remington and Valdez
Peninsula Conference: Homer, Nikiski, Seward, Ketchikan, Vozneskenka
Top two from each conference advance to state playoffs.
The ASAA Board will address classification, divisions and conferences for basketball on Tuesday, the second day of the ASAA winter meetings. State-wide scheduling for the 2018-19 school year awaits the final decisions of the ASAA board.
