By BUCH HARMON
It’s similar to getting round pegs to fit in square holes or to a large family figuring out who will host Christmas.
With two teams leaving the Tri-Valley Conference after this year and three new members on the way, athletic directors and superintendents of member schools are in the middle of the difficult task of realigning the three divisions within the conference. With factors like rivalries, school size, and travel to consider, devising a plan to rearrange the conference has been an exercise in futility so far.
Having to re-align the divisions in the TVC came about when Merrill and Breckenridge decided to depart the league to join the Mid-State Activities Conference. To replace the two schools, the league accepted applications from Nouvel Catholic Central, Pinconning, and Standish-Sterling.
Picking up three new schools has been the easy part, aligning the three divisions to the satisfaction of all the league members has been like getting gridlock untangled in Washington, D.C.
League athletic directors and superintendents have two major issues to juggle when making adjustments to the league. “The constitution says that we should look at realignment by enrollment and location,” said Michigan Lutheran Seminary athletic director David Lecker. “That is tough because we have schools with enrollments of 200 and some with enrollments of 600.”
Location of the schools is also a big issue. “Travel is always an issue when trying to align new schools,” said Ithaca athletic director Terry Hessbrook. “We have to take into consideration that some teams will be traveling a long ways in some of the realignment proposals. That is very tough on students during the week.”
The league will have quite a large geographic footprint with the addition of the three schools, especially Pinconning, located some 15 miles north of Bay City and Standish-Sterling, located another 10 miles north of that. When you consider teams like Ithaca, Shepherd, and Alma are located along US-127 to the west, Ovid-Elsie is located far to the south along M-21, and North Branch is just six miles west of M-53 in the middle of the Thumb, you have a league that covers a huge chunk of eastern Michigan. “We have schools that could possibly drive 90 miles for a contest,” Lecker said. “So to work with those two criteria is hard to do.”
Also part of the equation is each school making sure the situation works best for its students and fans. “The other side of it is that we have athletic directors and superintendents who really care for their schools,” Lecker said. “They want what is best for their schools, so some of the proposals would mean a compromise from some schools, and that is hard for them to do. They may have to drive farther or play schools with bigger enrollments.”
Another factor to be considered is that, with two teams leaving the league and three entering, the three division setup would leave one division with an odd number of teams, creating a real square peg, round hole situation. The league will have 25 teams and three divisions, leaving one division with nine members. “One of the main obstacles to getting a new realignment is the odd number of teams that one of the divisions is going to have,” Hessbrook said.
The league has met several times and voted on different proposals to realign the league with no consensus. Not only has the league looked at making the three-division alignment work, but they have also explored breaking the conference up into four divisions. However, moving schools from one division to another could possibly impact long-standing rivalries. “The committee also wants to keep some of the traditional rivalries, which again adds to the difficulty of coming up with an alignment which works for the majority,” Lecker said.
The influx of the new teams, however, brings the possibility of some new and exciting rivalries. “We will continue to try to keep traditional rivalries in play,” Hessbrook said. “However, with realignment will come new rivalries.”
The league will continue to meet before the beginning of the 2015-16 school year and try to hammer out a solution, as league schools need to finalize scheduling for the 2016-17 school year.
This year’s conference lineup has Birch Run, Bridgeport, Caro, Garber, Frankenmuth, Millington, North Branch, and LakeVille in the East Division; Alma, Chesaning, Freeland, Hemlock, Bullock Creek, Ovid-Elsie, Swan Valley, and Shepherd in the Central Division; and Breckenridge, Carrollton, Ithaca, Merrill, Michigan Lutheran Seminary, Valley Lutheran, Saint Charles, and Saint Louis in the West.