MSHSL adopts district scheduling

[goldy313]

http://www.mshsl.org/mshsl/index.asp Click on "John's Journal"

Football is going to 10-16 (or larger) team districts in 2015 and conferences will be no longer be considered in football. All games will be played in the district and districts can cross classes. Sectional play will remain unchanged. Football drives conferences and has driven the expansion and breaking apart of many conferences recently. Without this factor in scheduling will more schools forgo conferences all together and become independent? At the very least schools won't be tied to conferences strictly to get a full schedule for football anymore so how this shakes out to other sports will be interesting to watch.

[MNHockeyFan]

Huge news. It's just a matter of time until other sports, including boys and girls hockey, follow suit.

[HShockeywatcher]

Without this factor in scheduling will more schools forgo conferences all together and become independent?

I know the MSHSL was dealing with lawsuits from multiple Lake Conference schools because they were having trouble filling an 8 game schedule. It is entirely possible this will be just for football and not spill over into anything else, but we'll see.

The blurb on the site wasn't specific; do you know if this schedule will allow for non-district games? Is it all 8 games or is there the option for only 7?

[goldy313]

As I hear it all games will be played in the district unless there is a odd number of teams then there is a possibility if zero week or out of state games but that should only be 1 district across all classes.

I don't think district scheduling will spill to other sports, remember football plays only 8 games and only once a week, that is why scheduling is such an issue.

I do think that without being tied into a conference to have set football games more schools may choose to be independent though. Many sports don't require conference affiliation and conference matches are money burners; wrestling, track, cross country, swimming, tennis, golf, etc. sports where it would be cost effective to schedule multiple teams instead of duals or even triangulars. It would also free up events for sports with limited allowed events.

[almostashappy]

As I hear it all games will be played in the district unless there is a odd number of teams then there is a possibility if zero week or out of state games but that should only be 1 district across all classes.

I don't think district scheduling will spill to other sports, remember football plays only 8 games and only once a week, that is why scheduling is such an issue.

I do think that without being tied into a conference to have set football games more schools may choose to be independent though. Many sports don't require conference affiliation and conference matches are money burners; wrestling, track, cross country, swimming, tennis, golf, etc. sports where it would be cost effective to schedule multiple teams instead of duals or even triangulars. It would also free up events for sports with limited allowed events.

Point taken, although some of the sports you mentioned already have multi-team events...does any cross-country team out there hold individual races against a single opponent?

If you want to see change in boys hockey and encourage more teams to go independent, I'd suggest a better way of going about it is to mandate that every team play every other team in their section at least once during the regular season. That would help with section seedings, and tie up 6-9 of the regular season games (or 12-18 if you do home-and-home). Conferences that are heavily represented within a single section could still play conference schedules, but some schools would be faced with either using all of their non-conference regular season games with section opponents, or going independent.

[karl(east)]

I sure wouldn't complain if more teams go independent for hockey, but I think it's also possible that we'll see some conference realignment that is (finally!) based on sports other than football. That doesn't necessarily mean hockey will come to the fore, but it can't hurt.