By CRAIG HALL
Heavener News
Okay, people, nobody asked, told, or requested I redo Class 2A-1 for Oklahoma schools.
Read more: New district suggestions for Class 2A-1The current alignment simply does not work. If I had my choice, I would be back to a unified Class 2A and Class B.
But since the OSSAA will probably not drop the I and II divisions, I have a suggestion that will work, in my opinion.
The main thing is districts would drop from eight teams to four teams. Yeah, I know we have had eighth team districts since the 1980s, mainly because of scheduling reasons. I don’t recall having scheduling problems back then, and I am sure the schedules would be filled.
I also don’t think the OSSAA took into consideration the traveling difficulties. There is no reason a district should have two teams practically in Texas, two more hugging the Arkansas state lines, one team in the Tulsa suburbs and three teams in the Shawnee area. This produces.
According to Google, it is 169 miles from Kiefer to Kingston, a drive in a car for two hours and 47 minutes. For Heavener to drive to Kingston, Heavener’s trip to Kingston Thursday, which incidentally is on a night when many people try to work the following day is 163 miles or two hours and 49 minutes.
A trip from Heavener to Bethel, which closes out the regular season, is 182 miles, or approximately a drive time of two hours and 49 minutes.
Trips like this should not occur in district play. Playoffs, okay, but not district play. Heavener has three road district games remaining. The two that were previously mentioned to Kingston and Bethel, plus a trip to Okmulgee after an earlier trip to Prague.
For Roland, it is a 197 mile trip to Kingston, or a drive time of three hours and seven minutes.
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I know the OSSAA tries to do its best, but sometime I believe so they are more worried about having the strongest teams in a district, to heck with the travel times.
Instead, I have this proposal.
There would be two four-team districts in each section, aside from one three-team district that would hold the Oklahoma City private schools, so the top team in one district would play the second-place team in the other district out of the same section.
Then, the two winners from the first round would play for the section championship at the team with the better record, or preferably a neutral location. A district champion should not be on the road aside from neutral locations.
After that, the winner from Section Four would play the winner of Section Three with that winner playing the survivor out of Sections One and Two for the state championship. My plan does not take into consideration power teams, just geography.
Those teams would be in the same districts in baseball, softball and whatever sports each school offers. That means we would need to have the same sports. We don’t need slow pitch softball. Move fast pitch to spring, where schools could easier play schools from surrounding states, and use fall for cross country or volleyball.
So that removes the funky districts such as the one a few years ago that had Heavener and Tishomingo in the same district, or in baseball where Heavener has been in districts with schools from Tulsa, Henryetta and even worse. Now, the only required road trip would be the home-and-home for the other sports aside from Heavener.
But how could it be set up? I did not do a deep dive on locations out of our area, but I am sure there could easily be a easy solution for people more knowledgeable.
Again, this includes only the current 2A-I schools which I hope gets disbanded and there is once again just a Class 2A and Class A, that would make the travel even easier. But that is another thought for another column.
So here is the projected Class 2A-I sections and districts.
Section one
District one: Heavener, Roland, Westville and Sequoyah-Tahlequah.
District two: Kingston, Hugo, Marietta and Dickson,
Section two
District 3: Kiefer, Prague, Okmulgee and Bethel
District 4: Metro Christian, Tulsa Central, Webster and Sperry
Section three
District 5: Chandler, Dewey, Blackwell and Perry.
District 6: Lexington, Washington, Lindsey, Chisholm.
Section four
District 7: Jones, Little Axe, Perry and Millwood.
District 8: Mt. St. Mary, Oklahoma Christian School and Crossings Christian.
Again, this is not perfect. I was looking back at this and figured out Dewey probably is in the wrong place, but I could not decide where to move them and make everything work. Sperry also doesn’t need to be in a district with all Tulsa schools, but the only solution would be to swap out Sperry and Kiefer, and that would make the travel bad for Sperry.
I do not think it would be hard to complete your schedule. You are looking at seven non-district schools. For Heavener, they have all the Arkansas schools, but hopefully not Charleston, plus Panama, Pocola, Spiro, Wilburton, Vian, Hartshorne, Eufaula, Stigler, Antlers, Talihina, and many others.
So we will follow this suggestion. Again, it would be just like Texas, where the teams in your football district are also in the same district with other sports. If, for instance, Byng was in this district and the Pirates don’t play baseball, they would be included in District 8 just so we could have the same number of schools in each district. Although you could move Millwood to District 8 and stick Byng in District 7.
One final suggestion. If these teams are in Class 2A-I, that is the same class they should compete in throughout all sports. So many of these schools are bumped up to Class 3A in basketball, but let 3A play 3A and 2A play 2A.
If you have a suggestion, place It in the comments below.
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