Breaking up is hard to do.
Long-standing leagues in football are no different.
That’s why the question of reshuffling and realigning the way Colorado prep football’s top two classifications align themselves is a cause of great debate.
For some, it’s the tradition. For others, it’s the travel or the tedious nature of trying to find worthy opponents for nonleague games.
Depending on whom you talk to, breaking up some leagues is the first or last place to start.
“I’m not going to be the one that breaks up a 100-year-old league,” Denver Public Schools district athletic director Leslie Moore said.
The Class 5A Denver Prep League has remained intact although few of the high schools post enrollment numbers close to the 1,661 cutoff mark. While upper-crust teams such as Montbello and Thomas Jefferson can compete with 5A’s elite, schools such as Abraham Lincoln, North and East have their hands full with 4A and some 3A squads.
Moore said she realizes the DPL needs to be reworked, but not at the cost of tradition. She said she is working on a proposal that would allow the league to remain intact but its members would be split in 5A and 4A for postseason and nonleague purposes.
The Centennial League stretches from Boulder to southeast Aurora and regularly produces some of the state’s top football talent. That alone is reason for Fairview coach Tom McCartney to stick around rather than join teams from the nearby Front Range League.
“We definitely get excited about the tradition of the league and we’ve always felt like it’s been one of the top-notch leagues in the state and kind of raises your level of play,” McCartney said. “From a selfish and biased opinion, I do like our conference.”
So does Jefferson County League coach Jay Madden, but at what cost?
“I love Jeffco and I’m a Jeffco guy,” said Madden, now at Pomona. “But do you know what? Life changes.”
With gas prices and highway congestion rising, some say it makes no sense for students and families to travel so much just to compete in athletics or watch a Friday night game. Especially with the availability of closer, and typically newer, schools.
“I understand the history and tradition, but what you have to keep in mind is the kids,” Legacy coach Wayne Voorhees said. “Is history and tradition discouraging the kids?”
Voorhees believes the 5A leagues need to achieve some sort of balance so that each league has about eight schools. This would help leagues such as Jeffco and Colorado Springs that have few teams and run into headaches when trying to fill out their nonleague schedule.
To Voorhees, it makes sense to group schools geographically to cut costs and facilitate local rivalries.
According to District 11 athletic director Dave Eichman, the five Colorado Springs-based schools slated to be 5A next season are in discussions with joining into a partnership with Jeffco.
ThunderRidge athletic director Bob Nelson, a former football coach, believes the days of neighborhood rivalries have passed. He also thinks leagues spread over several cities allow student-athletes to experience more diversity.
“I would hate to see any of those leagues break up just based upon geography,” Nelson said.
Most of the 4A leagues seem to be complaint-free. The Northern League takes care of the Loveland and Greeley teams while the Pikes Peak and Foothills leagues give the Colorado Springs and Pueblo squads ease in scheduling and travel.
For some, the bigger issue is the discrepancies in the enrollments of the top 5A and 4A schools. Most of the state’s biggest schools are in the Centennial League, one of the reasons behind the formation of the Continental League (now the American and National leagues).
Some teams feel they always will be at a disadvantage playing against powerhouse Cherry Creek, the largest school in 5A, or against Monarch, one of the larger 4A programs.
“I don’t set the classification numbers,” Monarch coach Phil Bravo said. “We’re going to play where the state of Colorado says we’re playing based on the numbers they have spent time creating.”
Unquestionably, strength comes in numbers. A list of state champions over the past 10 years is verification. The David knocking out Goliath scenario seems reserved for earlier playoff rounds at best.
At 4A Lakewood, which will jump to 5A in 2006, coach Mark Robinson played on the Tigers squad that thumped Cherry Creek 47-8 with just 27 players in the 1985 state final.
“It was a freak accident,” Robinson said of that team. “It absolutely, positively was. It’s something that people on the outside never understand.”
By his count, 16 of those 27 players played college football, two played professional baseball and another two played collegiate baseball.
Robinson believes dominant 4A football programs should look at the challenge of moving up to 5A with a sense of honor and prestige – not because their enrollment makes them.
“Colorado has gone in the opposite direction,” he said, adding that some schools can’t wait to go down to 4A so they can dominate other teams.
Longtime Brighton coach Tom Ritter thinks football- specific enrollment numbers, which he traces to the failed experiment of adding a 6A group in the early 1990s, have created most of the controversy.
“What is right for football should be right for baseball and basketball,” Ritter said.
