The proposed changes to high school football alignment from last month were passed by the Colorado High School Activities Association’s legislative council Thursday.
As announced by CHSAA through CHSAANow.com, the changes voted on Thursday at the state governing body’s legislative meeting will shake up the football season’s calendar and league alignment, change the format for the state volleyball tournament and baseball’s regular season, and introduce potential changes to the rating percentage index, which determines playoff fields and seeds across many high school sports.
All changes will be in place for the 2018-19 school year.
Adam Bright, the athletic director at Durango High School, said the voting for the new football leagues went through without issue, which was expected.
In football, Durango High School will join Pueblo Centennial, Pueblo Central, Pueblo County, Pueblo East and Pueblo South to form the Class 3A Southern 3 League. When the changes were proposed last month, DHS head coach David Vogt said the five-hour bus trips to Pueblo for all away league games isn’t an issue for the Demons, who are used to the trip after spending the past couple of seasons in a league with Pueblo Central, Pueblo County and Pueblo East.
Bayfield High School will see a small change to its league with Salida replacing Delta to form the Class 2A Southwest League. Bayfield and Salida will be joined by Alamosa, Gunnison, Montezuma-Cortez and Pagosa Springs.
Maybe the biggest change for the 3A and 2A schools is the state championship game will be played on a neutral field rather than at home sites. Last year, Bayfield hosted the state championship football game against La Junta in front of more than 6,000 fans.
“It’s a 50-50 thing,” BHS head coach Gary Heide said. “Some years when you would be the team that would have to travel, the neutral field is a good thing, and if you’re the team that would host, it’s a negative. Overall, if the game ends up somewhere halfway between the two schools, it will be a good thing for fans not to travel as far. I think everybody involved will respect each other’s issues and make the mileage equal, but then you have to find a facility and come to an agreement, and hopefully that isn’t too difficult.”
Ignacio High School will see a similar change to its league. The Bobcats will remain in the 1A Southern Peaks League with Centauri, Center, Dolores and Monte Vista. The only change to the league is swapping out John Mall for Center.
The other change in football moved up the first day teams are allowed to practice by one week to Aug. 6, which matches the calendar of the National Federation of State High School Association. Allowing teams an extra week of practice will eliminate two-a-day practices.
With the changes, teams will be able to scrimmage Aug. 16, and the first week of the regular season will be Aug. 23.
The baseball season for Classes 3A-5A was extended from 19 to 23 games in the regular season. Class 1A and 2A baseball will remain at 19 regular season games because 1A and 2A will continue playing in district tournaments.
With the bump in the number of games, players are now allowed to play 161 innings – the previous cap was 133 innings – and the season was extended by one week, with the state tournaments for 3A, 4A and 5A scheduled for the weekend after Memorial Day.
The changes to baseball opens the door for softball to jump up to 23 regular season games as well. The board will vote on that change in April.
The state volleyball format will get rid of pool play at the state tournament and implement a bracket.
The new bracket format will be a 12-team Olympic crossover, meaning it will be double elimination up until the semifinals, when it shifts to single elimination. The move is expected to speed up the state tournament. It also eliminated meaningless matches between two teams in a pool who have already been knocked out of pool play.
“I applaud the format change to the CHSAA tournament,” former Bayfield head coach Terene Foutz said. “The three-day format, double-elimination bracket increases the competitiveness of the event. The top teams in the state are now alive if the RPI seeding is faulty, and tiebreaker eliminations are removed. Teams having rightfully earned their state showing can battle their way toward a state championship. Every match would count, as it should at that level.”
The 3A girls soccer playoffs will expand from 24 to 32 teams. That move could help rural teams, such as Bayfield, find more chances to play in the postseason.
“It makes it a tougher road to get to the championship, but we’ve never been there,” BHS head coach Jen Zelinski said. “It helps open up more spots for us and anybody outside the Front Range to have a better shot to make the playoffs.”
Zelinski said having young players gain exposure to the postseason and the chance to play the elite teams can only help make the Wolverines better.
“The kids out here, a lot of them are first-timers who have never played or seen a professional soccer game,” she said. “So when we get younger girls involved and they can go to state two or three years in a row, it makes a big difference when they are seniors. To be honest, the few times we’ve been able to go deeper in the playoffs was thanks to having girls on the team who made the first round a couple of times, and that helped them grow up.”
Changes also could come to the rating percentage index, which is used to determine and seed playoff fields.
The potential changes move the weighting from 25 percent on a team’s winning percentage, 50 percent on opponents’ winning percentage and 25 percent on the winning percentage of the team’s opponents’ opponents to a 30/40/30 formula.
The committee recommended that all sports use the 30/40/30 formula to eliminate confusion caused when different sports use their own formula. “The biggest thing that I like about it was the talk that it would be consistent across every sport. There would be no more trying to remember which sport was which,” Bright said. “My concerns are the other piece they added to it.
“They would look at doing a classification modifier for all sports like they have for football. That would definitely impact Durango more so than most because we don’t have a school our size within 250 miles of us. For the school that probably travels the most in the state, to add that piece to it is tough. To be fair to our kids, we would want to schedule properly for RPI, and that is only going to mean more travel for us.”
Under the model, teams get one “throw-away game” in which they aren’t penalized in RPI by playing teams in a lower classification. If the changes go through as discussed, DHS would get dinged in RPI for scheduling games with area teams such as Bayfield, Ignacio, Montezuma-Cortez and Pagosa Springs.
“We love playing Bayfield – that’s a great rivalry. But if they’re going to do that for basketball, I have to choose if we want to play Bayfield, Pagosa, Cortez or Ignacio,” Bright said. “We have to choose which one we want to play, because if we play another, we’ll get dinged in RPI. My hope is that they give us one or two more, because if they don’t, it’s going to cause some issues.”
The CHSAA board will vote on the proposed RPI changes next month.
Foutz applauded the proposal.
“The recommendation is more preferable,” she said. “Of course, every coach would like complete control of the win percentage, however at least the 50 percent opponent win/loss percentage has dropped (to 40). It’s a step in the right direction, especially benefiting rural coaches if they manage strong scheduling strategies.”
<URL destination="http://chsaanow.com/">More detailed information on the changes can be found on CHSAANow.com.
Regional sports editor John Livingston contributed to this report.
kschneider@durangoherald.com
