OSAA board signs off on new plan that breaks up the old IMC
By Beau Eastes / The Bulletin
Published: October 27. 2009 4:00AM PSTPORTLAND — The Intermountain Conference is no more.
The eight-team conference, currently made up of Bend, Mountain View, Summit, Crook County, Madras, The Dalles-Wahtonka, Pendleton and Hermiston high schools, will essentially be split into two separate leagues at the start of the 2010-11 school year based on the Oregon School Activities Association's new reclassification plan.
That plan was approved Monday by the OSAA's executive board.
Bend, Mountain View, Summit, Redmond and Crook County will make up a new Central Oregon Hybrid league, while Hermiston, Pendleton, The Dalles-Wahtonka and Hood River Valley will compete together in the new four-school Columbia River Conference. (The new Central Oregon league will be a hybrid league because Redmond will compete in Class 6A for the postseason, Bend, Mountain View and Summit will be 5A schools, and Crook County will be a 4A school, making the conference a “hybrid” of classifications. A new high school in Redmond is due to open during the 2010-14 time block, and both the new and existing Redmond schools are expected to compete in Class 5A.)
For the past 50 years, Bend High — the oldest high school in Bend — has competed in some version of the IMC with Pendleton and Hermiston.
Redmond also was an original member of the IMC, but for the past four years it has been a member of the Class 6A, Salem-based Central Valley Conference.
Crook County and Mountain View also have been continuous members of the IMC for the past 30 years.
After more than a year of meetings, the OSAA classification and districting committee's final recommendation to the OSAA executive board was approved without modification at the organization's meeting Monday at the Doubletree Hotel at Portland's Lloyd Center.
Public testimony was taken one final time before the OSAA executive board went into a private work session for nearly two hours. The state's governing body for high school athletics voted unanimously to adopt the classification and districting committee's ninth and final proposal for the next four academic years.
“After a year and a half of speculation we're finally moving forward,” said Dave Hood, Mountain View's athletic director. “That's progress. Now let's go get to work.”
Four years after the OSAA expanded from four to six classifications, the organization made another major move by incorporating the concept of mixed, or hybrid, leagues. Starting in 2010, six Oregon leagues will be made up of schools from different classifications. Classifications are based on school enrollment numbers.
“The (reclassification before the start of the 2006-07 school year) was all about competitive balance,” said Randy Schild, an OSAA executive board member and superintendent of the Tillamook School District. “That wasn't the case this time. Otherwise we wouldn't have hybrids. Hybrid leagues are built around location and saving money.”
Travel and budget costs were the overriding concern of the OSAA's 200-plus member schools during the most recent reorganization plan, said classification and districting committee chairman John Harrington, president at Central Catholic High School in Portland.
“We spent more time on that than any other issue,” Harrington said about the committee's attempt to reduce travel and travel costs for schools. “In some leagues we had some success with that, and others not as much so.”
For Central Oregon's large schools, the OSAA's new reclassification is a mixed blessing, according to local athletic directors. Redmond no longer will be in the Central Valley Conference, which is based in Salem, some 130 miles away across the Cascade Mountains. And Bend, Mountain View, Summit and Crook County will be freed from making bus rides of five hours or more for league contests in northeast Oregon against Pendleton and Hermiston.
But with just five teams in their league (six when the new Redmond school opens), area schools figure to be looking for more nonleague contests than ever before. Additionally, while the hybrid concept is now a reality, no one knows yet how exactly it will work. In the Central Oregon Hybrid, for example, how will Class 6A Redmond teams and athletes qualify for state championship competition when no other 6A schools exist in its league? Crook County faces a similar situation as the only 4A team in the Central Oregon Hybrid. Will schools in hybrid leagues participate in some sort of regional playoff? Will football teams in hybrid leagues play outside their hybrid conference with other schools in their same classification?
The OSAA's state championship committee, which began meeting earlier this month, has been given the responsibility of determining how teams and athletes from hybrid leagues will qualify for the postseason. The committee next meets on Nov. 2 and is scheduled to present a final recommendation on May 3, 2010.
“Now it's a matter of finding games,” said Scott Polen, Crook County's athletic director, about his first move after the finalization of the OSAA reclassification plan. “But who knows how the championship committee stuff works out? If I'm an A.D. from (a non-hybrid) league, I already have my league games set and I'm talking to (other athletic directors) about nonleague games. ... Hybrid (conference) teams are left with their tails hanging in the wind trying to figure out who to schedule.”
Hood, too, said he is concerned about the feasibility of filling out his nonconference schedules during an economic time when teams don't want to travel any farther than they have to. With a five-team league, even if schools play one another three times in basketball, for example, that is a conference schedule of only 12 games. That leaves Central Oregon's large schools still trying to find 12 nonleague games if they want to play the OSAA maximum of 24 regular-season games. (Currently, IMC teams play each others team twice for a 14-game league schedule.)
“Yes, our league travel is way reduced,” Hood said about ending league relations with Hermiston and Pendleton. “And overall you'll see a reduction in travel costs and loss of class time. That's very good. ... But my biggest concern is having to find a ton of nonleague games given the environment where no one wants to travel over here.”
Central Oregon's large schools were not the only area schools to be affected by the OSAA's new reclassification plan. Madras, which is currently a member of the IMC, will play in the Class 4A Tri-Valley Conference for the next four years with Portland-area schools Estacada, Gladstone, La Salle of Milwaukie, Molalla, and North Marion of Aurora.
Sisters and La Pine will remain in a modified version of the current 4A Sky-Em League. With Marist of Eugene and Pleasant Hill moving out of the 4A classification, current league members Cottage Grove, Elmira and Junction City will stay in the Sky-Em with Sisters and La Pine, along with soon-to-be new league member Sweet Home.
In the smaller-school classifications, Culver will remain in the Class 2A Tri-River Conference, and Gilchrist will stay in the Class 1A Mountain Valley League. Central Christian of Redmond remains in the 1A Big Sky League.
“There's a lot of work to be done, but now we have a direction,” Hood said about preparing for the 2010-11 athletic seasons and beyond. “We'll have to be creative and open-minded, like we always have been. But we'll make it work.”
Beau Eastes can be reached at 541-383-0305 or at beastes@bendbulletin.com.
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