Tears and triumph marked the end of days last week for Big Park Community and West Sedona schools in the Verde Valley Athletic Association.
Incoming seventh- and eighth-grade Coyotes and Wildcats will consolidate in August to form a new junior high at Sedona Red Rock High School.
The permanent loss of at least one VVAA team will be the first challenge confronting commissioner and Camp Verde Middle School Principal Danny Howe when he meets Monday, May 16, with athletic directors from the four other full-time member schools.
He can make a clean start in certain areas. Past claims of coach harassment at Camp Verde games and parent allegations of biased Clarkdale officials had not only canceled games but, in December, would boil over into a disorderly conduct charge against a Big Park basketball coach.
Moreover, the last five years of staff cutbacks at both schools had broken the feeder system in sports such as cross-country, softball and girls basketball, as off-campus coaches were left scrambling at the last minute just to field teams.
Sometimes, they couldn’t — a problem faced annually by part-time participants like Beaver Creek School, Mountain View Preparatory Academy and Cornville’s Oak Creek School.
A new, central campus, and larger numbers, should fix that problem in Sedona — regardless of what intramural leagues are devised for both schools’ students to fill their gyms and fields in the evenings.
Too big of an August enrollment, however, and the new junior high will face the same problem Howe has dealt with for most of the decade, as CVMS has too many students to compete in the Small Schools State Basketball and Volleyball championships.
The only alternative is to play far deeper teams, with often different seasons, like Cottonwood Middle School in the Quad City League.
That is not a solution for most VVAA members and could frustrate more students and parents into turning their back on school sports — and their vital ineligibility deterrent — to instead focus full-time on club sports.
So VVAA athletic directors need to come together in May and develop a much more uniform league — one unhampered by these additional issues:
? Incomplete standings and results of games in most sports; resulting in
? Tournament seedings inevitably disputed by at least one coach, even after brackets have been released; stemming from
? Gentleman’s agreements ignoring Arizona Interscholastic Association rules that define how many players are required to play for games to count as official wins or losses — not just forfeits or scrimmages.
I can resolve the first issue if all member schools are willing to report all their scores to the email below.
But this offseason is time for the Verde Valley Athletic Association to get its sports together.
