Anaconda moving to Class B

[BelgradeBobcat]

http://www.nbcmontana.com/news/anaconda ... um=twitter" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Anaconda used to have two high schools, Anaconda High and Anaconda Central (Catholic). And Anaconda High was a AA school at one time. Sad to see. It is such an interesting town.

They'll be pretty tough in Class B.

[John K]

http://www.nbcmontana.com/news/anaconda ... um=twitter

Anaconda used to have two high schools, Anaconda High and Anaconda Central (Catholic). And Anaconda High was a AA school at one time. Sad to see. It is such an interesting town.

They'll be pretty tough in Class B.

With enrollments dropping statewide, and so many schools dropping from A to B, or B to C as a consequence of that, maybe the MHSA should consider adjusting the cutoff points for the various classifications. I believe it's currently 1,000 for AA/A, 400 for A/B and 130 for B/C. You could probably leave AA/A at 1,000, but maybe drop the A/B cutoff to 300, and B/C to 100, so that you'd have a few more schools in Class A and B, and a few less in Class C. With Anaconda dropping down, that leaves only 21 schools in Class A, about 40 in Class B, and there must be weil over 100 in Class C. There's quite a few more C schools than AA, A, and B all combined. The current cutoffs are just arbitrary numbers, and aren't necessarily set in stone. There's no reason they couldn't be modified.

[LTown Cat]

http://www.nbcmontana.com/news/anaconda ... um=twitter

Anaconda used to have two high schools, Anaconda High and Anaconda Central (Catholic). And Anaconda High was a AA school at one time. Sad to see. It is such an interesting town.

They'll be pretty tough in Class B.

With enrollments dropping statewide, and so many schools dropping from A to B, or B to C as a consequence of that, maybe the MHSA should consider adjusting the cutoff points for the various classifications. I believe it's currently 1,000 for AA/A, 400 for A/B and 130 for B/C. You could probably leave AA/A at 1,000, but maybe drop the A/B cutoff to 300, and B/C to 100, so that you'd have a few more schools in Class A and B, and a few less in Class C. With Anaconda dropping down, that leaves only 21 schools in Class A, about 40 in Class B, and there must be weil over 100 in Class C. There's quite a few more C schools than AA, A, and B all combined. The current cutoffs are just arbitrary numbers, and aren't necessarily set in stone. There's no reason they couldn't be modified.

It's 925 for AA right now.

I disagree. How is a school with enrollment of 310 in class A expected to continuously compete with schools with enrollments of 900. And Butte/Billings Central aren't good examples. The only small enrollment school that continuously does it is Dillon and it's actually nothing short of amazing that they do. The same can be said in class C where schools with 20 kids are trying to compete with schools approaching 100. Although co-ops have helped in many cases.

My thoughts for years is that a 5th classification is needed to get all the classes to closer enrollment gaps. You could do something like this:
1,000+ is 5A
400-999 is 4A
250-399 is 3A
100-249 is 2A
0-99 is 1A--again co-ops would help here.

I haven't checked to see what kind of #'s you would have in each class so this is just a quick example.

[allcat]

http://www.nbcmontana.com/news/anaconda ... um=twitter

Anaconda used to have two high schools, Anaconda High and Anaconda Central (Catholic). And Anaconda High was a AA school at one time. Sad to see. It is such an interesting town.

They'll be pretty tough in Class B.

With enrollments dropping statewide, and so many schools dropping from A to B, or B to C as a consequence of that, maybe the MHSA should consider adjusting the cutoff points for the various classifications. I believe it's currently 1,000 for AA/A, 400 for A/B and 130 for B/C. You could probably leave AA/A at 1,000, but maybe drop the A/B cutoff to 300, and B/C to 100, so that you'd have a few more schools in Class A and B, and a few less in Class C. With Anaconda dropping down, that leaves only 21 schools in Class A, about 40 in Class B, and there must be weil over 100 in Class C. There's quite a few more C schools than AA, A, and B all combined. The current cutoffs are just arbitrary numbers, and aren't necessarily set in stone. There's no reason they couldn't be modified.

It's 925 for AA right now.

I disagree. How is a school with enrollment of 310 in class A expected to continuously compete with schools with enrollments of 900. And Butte/Billings Central aren't good examples. The only small enrollment school that continuously does it is Dillon and it's actually nothing short of amazing that they do. The same can be said in class C where schools with 20 kids are trying to compete with schools approaching 100. Although co-ops have helped in many cases.

My thoughts for years is that a 5th classification is needed to get all the classes to closer enrollment gaps. You could do something like this:
1,000+ is 5A
500-999 is 4A
250-399 is 3A
100-249 is 2A
0-99 is 1A--again co-ops would help here.

I haven't checked to see what kind of #'s you would have in each class so this is just a quick example.

Why use The A's?

[LTown Cat]

http://www.nbcmontana.com/news/anaconda ... um=twitter

Anaconda used to have two high schools, Anaconda High and Anaconda Central (Catholic). And Anaconda High was a AA school at one time. Sad to see. It is such an interesting town.

They'll be pretty tough in Class B.

With enrollments dropping statewide, and so many schools dropping from A to B, or B to C as a consequence of that, maybe the MHSA should consider adjusting the cutoff points for the various classifications. I believe it's currently 1,000 for AA/A, 400 for A/B and 130 for B/C. You could probably leave AA/A at 1,000, but maybe drop the A/B cutoff to 300, and B/C to 100, so that you'd have a few more schools in Class A and B, and a few less in Class C. With Anaconda dropping down, that leaves only 21 schools in Class A, about 40 in Class B, and there must be weil over 100 in Class C. There's quite a few more C schools than AA, A, and B all combined. The current cutoffs are just arbitrary numbers, and aren't necessarily set in stone. There's no reason they couldn't be modified.

It's 925 for AA right now.

I disagree. How is a school with enrollment of 310 in class A expected to continuously compete with schools with enrollments of 900. And Butte/Billings Central aren't good examples. The only small enrollment school that continuously does it is Dillon and it's actually nothing short of amazing that they do. The same can be said in class C where schools with 20 kids are trying to compete with schools approaching 100. Although co-ops have helped in many cases.

My thoughts for years is that a 5th classification is needed to get all the classes to closer enrollment gaps. You could do something like this:
1,000+ is 5A
500-999 is 4A
250-399 is 3A
100-249 is 2A
0-99 is 1A--again co-ops would help here.

I haven't checked to see what kind of #'s you would have in each class so this is just a quick example.

Why use The A's?

No reason--just an example. You could go AAA, AA, A, B, C. I just think we need 5.

[John K]

http://www.nbcmontana.com/news/anaconda ... um=twitter

Anaconda used to have two high schools, Anaconda High and Anaconda Central (Catholic). And Anaconda High was a AA school at one time. Sad to see. It is such an interesting town.

They'll be pretty tough in Class B.

With enrollments dropping statewide, and so many schools dropping from A to B, or B to C as a consequence of that, maybe the MHSA should consider adjusting the cutoff points for the various classifications. I believe it's currently 1,000 for AA/A, 400 for A/B and 130 for B/C. You could probably leave AA/A at 1,000, but maybe drop the A/B cutoff to 300, and B/C to 100, so that you'd have a few more schools in Class A and B, and a few less in Class C. With Anaconda dropping down, that leaves only 21 schools in Class A, about 40 in Class B, and there must be weil over 100 in Class C. There's quite a few more C schools than AA, A, and B all combined. The current cutoffs are just arbitrary numbers, and aren't necessarily set in stone. There's no reason they couldn't be modified.

It's 925 for AA right now.

I disagree. How is a school with enrollment of 310 in class A expected to continuously compete with schools with enrollments of 900. And Butte/Billings Central aren't good examples. The only small enrollment school that continuously does it is Dillon and it's actually nothing short of amazing that they do. The same can be said in class C where schools with 20 kids are trying to compete with schools approaching 100. Although co-ops have helped in many cases.

My thoughts for years is that a 5th classification is needed to get all the classes to closer enrollment gaps. You could do something like this:
1,000+ is 5A
400-999 is 4A
250-399 is 3A
100-249 is 2A
0-99 is 1A--again co-ops would help here.

I haven't checked to see what kind of #'s you would have in each class so this is just a quick example.

That makes sense to me. I might tweak the cutoff points slightly, but I do like the idea of adding a 5th classification. Ideally, I think it should be organized in such a way so that the largest schools' enrollment would be approximately double that of the smallest, in each classification. Some schools are so small that this guideline wouldn't be practical for Class C, but it would work for all the others.

Class C: 0-124
Class B: 125-249
Class A: 250-499'
Class AA: 500-999
Class AAA: 1,000 plus

or maybe

Class C: 0-99
Class B: 100-199
Class A: 200-399
Class AA: 400-799
Class AAA: 800 plus

I like this one better for the smaller schools, although it would result in the largest AAA schools being quite a bit more than double the size of the smallest.

There are numerous examples of schools being very competitive, and even winning state championships, despite their enrollment being at the lower end of their classification. You mentioned a couple of them, but there are many others. The three Missoula schools are among the smallest in Class AA, barely over 1,000 each, which is half the size of Bozeman and the three Billings schools, but Sentinel has won three straight titles in girls BB, and Hellgate took state last year and finished 2nd this year in boys BB. Fairfield is probably the best example, as they're actually slightly below the B/C cutoff, and yet they're athletic teams have always been dominant in Class B. Many Class C schools with enrollments of less than 50 have won state titles, even though they were only about one-third the size of the largest C schools.

[LTown Cat]

http://www.nbcmontana.com/news/anaconda ... um=twitter

Anaconda used to have two high schools, Anaconda High and Anaconda Central (Catholic). And Anaconda High was a AA school at one time. Sad to see. It is such an interesting town.

They'll be pretty tough in Class B.

With enrollments dropping statewide, and so many schools dropping from A to B, or B to C as a consequence of that, maybe the MHSA should consider adjusting the cutoff points for the various classifications. I believe it's currently 1,000 for AA/A, 400 for A/B and 130 for B/C. You could probably leave AA/A at 1,000, but maybe drop the A/B cutoff to 300, and B/C to 100, so that you'd have a few more schools in Class A and B, and a few less in Class C. With Anaconda dropping down, that leaves only 21 schools in Class A, about 40 in Class B, and there must be weil over 100 in Class C. There's quite a few more C schools than AA, A, and B all combined. The current cutoffs are just arbitrary numbers, and aren't necessarily set in stone. There's no reason they couldn't be modified.

It's 925 for AA right now.

I disagree. How is a school with enrollment of 310 in class A expected to continuously compete with schools with enrollments of 900. And Butte/Billings Central aren't good examples. The only small enrollment school that continuously does it is Dillon and it's actually nothing short of amazing that they do. The same can be said in class C where schools with 20 kids are trying to compete with schools approaching 100. Although co-ops have helped in many cases.

My thoughts for years is that a 5th classification is needed to get all the classes to closer enrollment gaps. You could do something like this:
1,000+ is 5A
400-999 is 4A
250-399 is 3A
100-249 is 2A
0-99 is 1A--again co-ops would help here.

I haven't checked to see what kind of #'s you would have in each class so this is just a quick example.

That makes sense to me. I might tweak the cutoff points slightly, but I do like the idea of adding a 5th classification. Ideally, I think it should be organized in such a way so that the largest schools' enrollment would be approximately double that of the smallest, in each classification. Some schools are so small that this guideline wouldn't be practical for Class C, but it would work for all the others.

Class C: 0-124
Class B: 125-249
Class A: 250-499'
Class AA: 500-999
Class AAA: 1,000 plus

or maybe

Class C: 0-99
Class B: 100-199
Class A: 200-399
Class AA: 400-799
Class AAA: 800 plus

I like this one better for the smaller schools, although it would result in the largest AAA schools being quite a bit more than double the size of the smallest.

There are numerous examples of schools being very competitive, and even winning state championships, despite their enrollment being at the lower end of their classification. You mentioned a couple of them, but there are many others. The three Missoula schools are among the smallest in Class AA, barely over 1,000 each, which is half the size of Bozeman and the three Billings schools, but Sentinel has won three straight titles in girls BB, and Hellgate took state last year and finished 2nd this year in boys BB. Fairfield is probably the best example, as they're actually slightly below the B/C cutoff, and yet they're athletic teams have always been dominant in Class B. Many Class C schools with enrollments of less than 50 have won state titles, even though they were only about one-third the size of the largest C schools.

I agree with you when you have great groups of kids come through but it is very, very hard for the smaller schools in the classification to sustain the success. Much easier for the large schools. That's why Dillon just flat out amazes me.

[SonomaCat]

Just my own pet theory, but it seems that in a lot of cases the personality of the town has a lot to do with how successful their sports teams are, and that being smaller can sometimes even be a bit helpful (or at least mitigate the impact of having a smaller group to pick from).

If you have a town in which the culture is that most kids participate in sports from early ages and its a big deal in the community, you're just going to squeeze a lot more talent out of what is available than you would in a town where people didn't really care. The larger a town gets, the more diluted people's interests become (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), and the more likely it is that a lot of kids who could have been pretty good athletes instead end up pursuing other interests from early ages and never really get into sports on a competitive level.

I think back on my high school teams, some of whom were pretty decent. But had we all been going to Fergus (Lewistown) instead, quite a few of us probably wouldn't have developed the passionate interest in sports at early ages as we/they would have perceived that they weren't in the upper echelon of the sporting talent and wouldn't have practiced and developed into the best athletes they could be (especially the late bloomers).

So to a certain degree, I could see some advantages to having a smaller school that could at least partially offset the natural advantage a bigger school would have.

That said, my high school is currently hovering around 20 or so in enrollment, and is cooped with a school that might be in single figures, and it is definitely hard to compete with the schools that have over 100 ... but a few of those really small schools seem to do really well each year despite that.

[allcat]

In the world of everybody gets a trophy, I think using A B and C to denote size of school is unfair with an obvious bias towards the kids in the larger schools. I think we should have the divisions be named after colors or maybe even mascots.

[SonomaCat]

In the world of everybody gets a trophy, I think using A B and C to denote size of school is unfair with an obvious bias towards the kids in the larger schools. I think we should have the divisions be named after colors or maybe even mascots.

Or we could make up nonsensical acronyms like FCS and FBS so nobody would have any idea what anyone was talking about.

[allcat]

In the world of everybody gets a trophy, I think using A B and C to denote size of school is unfair with an obvious bias towards the kids in the larger schools. I think we should have the divisions be named after colors or maybe even mascots.

Or we could make up nonsensical acronyms like FCS and FBS so nobody would have any idea what anyone was talking about.

now that is a good idea, something where when somebody mention Lewistown half the people have to ask "what stupid division are they in".

[Hawks86]

They could also just let schools move up to AA because they kicked ass in A or B and there is much more prestige available at the AA level.

[allcat]

They could also just let schools move up to AA because they kicked ass in A or B and there is much more prestige available at the AA level.

Relegation would be a very interesting concept in high schools, but we have to go back to the trophy issue.

[Hawks86]

They could also just let schools move up to AA because they kicked ass in A or B and there is much more prestige available at the AA level.

Relegation would be a very interesting concept in high schools, but we have to go back to the trophy issue.

Trophy? It's all about competing at the highest level. Even being mediocre and never having a shot at the playoffs would bring huge radio money to those schools.

[allcat]

They could also just let schools move up to AA because they kicked ass in A or B and there is much more prestige available at the AA level.

Relegation would be a very interesting concept in high schools, but we have to go back to the trophy issue.

Trophy? It's all about competing at the highest level. Even being mediocre and never having a shot at the playoffs would bring huge radio money to those schools.

But you are getting off topic. I hijacked this thread and made it about renaming the classes. Stay on subject

[LTown Cat]

They could also just let schools move up to AA because they kicked ass in A or B and there is much more prestige available at the AA level.

Relegation would be a very interesting concept in high schools, but we have to go back to the trophy issue.

Along those lines:

So class A will be down to 21 teams (personally I feel 22 isn't enough to support 4 divisions). Last year you had two 6-team and two 5-team divisional tournaments.

For about 4 years there has been a group within class A pushing for two "super" divisions of 11 teams each. To accomplish this you would have two 8-team divisional tournaments. These tournaments would be huge and great tourneys. Imagine a divisional tourney at the Metra with Browning, Laurel, Billings Central, Hardin, Havre all at once. The place would be rocking. It keeps getting shot down by many schools in the classification. Among others one of the major reasons is that you would have to have the bottom 6 teams in each division play play-in games to get to divisionals and this isn't fair because not every player would get the chance to experience the tournament atmosphere. To me that is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard (fits in with the everyone gets a trophy thing).

What do you guys think?

[BelgradeBobcat]

http://www.mhsa.org/Enrollment/2013-14% ... cation.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[SonomaCat]

http://www.mhsa.org/Enrollment/2013-14% ... cation.pdf

Thanks for posting that -- always interesting to see those stats.

Not sure why the Sugarbeeters are Class C.

[kennethnoisewater]

http://www.mhsa.org/Enrollment/2013-14% ... cation.pdf

Thanks for posting that -- always interesting to see those stats.

Not sure why the Sugarbeeters are Class C.

I don't know if this is the case with Chinook or not, but a school has to be within a classification for three years before they move there. And even then there's a way to appeal that and stay in the higher classification. There was an argument in Bigfork a few years back to stay in Class A even though the enrollment dropped dramatically. I also wouldn't be surprised if geography sometimes played a factor, where you stayed in a class because there weren't any other schools in the area to complete against. I think I heard that was the case at Miles City years back, where they could have been AA but there was nobody in the region for them to play.

[LTown Cat]

http://www.mhsa.org/Enrollment/2013-14% ... cation.pdf

Thanks for posting that -- always interesting to see those stats.

Not sure why the Sugarbeeters are Class C.

I don't know if this is the case with Chinook or not, but a school has to be within a classification for three years before they move there. And even then there's a way to appeal that and stay in the higher classification. There was an argument in Bigfork a few years back to stay in Class A even though the enrollment dropped dramatically. I also wouldn't be surprised if geography sometimes played a factor, where you stayed in a class because there weren't any other schools in the area to complete against. I think I heard that was the case at Miles City years back, where they could have been AA but there was nobody in the region for them to play.

I'm pretty sure I saw on Twitter last night that Chinook is moving to B in 2015. I'll look for the link.

Edit:
It was from Slim Kimmel's Twitter. Here is what he had:
Anaconda going to B
Plentywood going to C
Billings and Butte Central both petitioned to stay in A even though they have B enrollment
Fairfield petitioned to stay in B even though they have C enrollment
Chinook is appealing MHSA's recommendation to move to B from C--not sure how they can justify this???
Belgrade is over the AA cutoff but there is a 10% rule allowing them to stay in A

Any moves start in the 2015-2016 school year.