Today’s meeting on conference realignment

Posted on January 26th, 2009 – 5:52 PM
By John Millea

–“There was tremendous dialogue and it’s really healthy.”

–“It’s really, really tangled when 10 schools are trying to look out for nine other schools’ interests. What’s been really nice is nobody is just looking out for themselves.”

–“I’m not sure we could have decided what to have for lunch.”

Those were some of the comments from people who attended Monday’s meeting of eight metro conferences, the second such gathering as people figure out how best to move forward after the demise of the Classic Lake Conference in spring 2010.

Twenty-seven people – principals, athletic directors and league executive secretaries – met at MSHSL headquarters in Brooklyn Center for a meeting that lasted around three hours.

After talking with several people who were there, I have three impressions:

1) There is unlikely to be major restructuring of conferences throughout the Twin Cities. Some have felt this was an opportunity to completely redraw the map, but sentiment doesn’t appear to be headed in that direction.

2) The key players in this are the Lake and Northwest Suburban conferences. If Edina, Hopkins, Minnetonka and Wayzata are unable to find leagues that will accept them as member, the MSHSL will place those schools into leagues. Placement would mean those four schools would most likely be thrown into the NW Suburban and the Lake, so it behooves those two leagues to be proactive.

3) Some people are already looking for scapegoats, so when bad things happen they can say, “We didn’t make this decision.”

In the Lake, discussions are ongoing about forming a Dakota County Conference. Seven Lake schools are in that county, so that would be a natural change. The Lake probably has the most sway in this entire discussion, and the Lake needs to take the lead. There are no easy answers, of course, but having the MSHSL simply say, “Wayzata and Minnetonka, you go to the Northwest Suburban, and Edina and Hopkins, you go to the Lake,” would make no one happy. The Lake and NW Suburban have already made it clear they don’t want to accept those schools as members.

The NW Suburban has taken a positive step by accepting Armstrong as a member when the Classic Lake dissolves. As for the Lake, I’m hearing that some officials in that league are ready to step aside, let placement happen and then lay the blame elsewhere. They would be able to say, “Hey, we had a great conference going until the MSHSL dumped Edina and Hopkins in our laps. Don’t blame us.”

If bad things happen, there will be plenty of blame to go around. A lot of it will be directed at people who had a chance to do something positive, but stood back and did nothing at all.