04/20/2007

League approves expansion

West Michigan D adds two schools

BY JAMES COOK

jcook@record-eagle.com

TRAVERSE CITY — The suddenly ever-changing landscape of high school conferences continues to ebb and flow as schools switch their affiliations.

Manistee Catholic Central and Big Rapids Crossroads Academy are two of the latest schools to join the fray. The two will become members of the Western Michigan D League starting next season.

Bear Lake was the final school board to approve the changes, voting in favor of the additions at its board meeting this week.

"I'm excited for it,” Bear Lake athletic director Barb Farfsing said. "It gives our league a whole new look. It gives our kids a chance to see a bigger area.”

Manistee Catholic was an independent in everything but football for the past decade.

"We're very excited about the opportunity,” Manistee Catholic athletic director Jason Allen said. "It'll be a plus for everybody involved. We played most of those teams anyway.”

The Sabers also looked into joining the Northwest Conference, but decided the smaller D league was a better fit.

Allen said finding non-conference games was getting more and more difficult.

"A lot of the smaller schools were against the (season) switch,” Allen said, "but the timing is as good as it can be.”

Holton, Hesperia and White Cloud — members of the rapidly dissolving Western Waterways Activities Conference — also asked to join the Western Michigan D, but wanted to come in as a group. The league was only willing to take on Hesperia, so all three schools decided not to join.

The eight-team league will gain two teams and lose one — Free Soil is dropping grades 9-12 next school year. Free Soil students will be able to choose their new school, and student-athletes will not lose any eligibility.

Manistee Catholic will continue to play football in the Mid-State Activities Conference, as only three current Western Michigan D teams — Brethren, Baldwin and Onekama— sponsor football. Those schools also belong to the Mid-State for football.

Big Rapids Crossroads comes to the Western Michigan D from the Alliance League, an eight-team conference of small charter and parochial schools.

The Western Michigan D isn't the only league facing change.

The Northwest and Cherryland conferences are going in opposite directions. When Buckley and Leland bolted to join the Northwest, it left the Cherryland with just four teams.

Three of the remaining Cherryland teams — Traverse City Christian, Northport and Lake Leelanau St. Mary's — have sent letters of interest to the Northwest, the first step towards possibly joining the conference. The issue was addressed at the Northwest's spring meeting of superintendents and tabled for the 2007-08 school year.

Northwest Conference secretary and treasurer Cody Inglis said action was tabled for two reasons: 1) The league is already in flux with the addition of Benzie Central, Buckley and Leland and the loss of Manton for next season, and wants to go through a full season with those changes before making more, and 2) The MHSAA seasons switch will throw another potential monkey wrench into the works of what will already be a fairly hectic year for league schools.

"There's just a lot on everybody's plate right now as athletic directors,” said Inglis, who is also the athletic director at Suttons Bay. "We want to do our due diligence on this.”

The abbreviated Cherryland Conference will live on for at least one more season, as three of the remaining schools await a decision by the Northwest for admittance after the 2007-08 school year.

"It's my understanding the Northwest is interested,” Lake Leelanau St. Mary's athletic director Kathy Herman said, "but until it happens we'll keep plugging ahead.”

With only four teams, the league could be hard-pressed to find enough non-conference games in some sports. And with the four schools not fielding a full slate of teams, the conference will have only two to three teams in many sports, and possibly only one softball team if TC Christian's doesn't get off the ground by next season.

Herman said Lake Leelanau is having some difficulty scheduling games because the Northwest teams are the closest geographically, but with the league expanding to eight teams, 16 of their 20 basketball dates are already booked, leaving few dates for non-conference games with other area teams.

"I'd like to see if there are some small schools that would like to come into the conference,” said Northport athletic director Marshall Collins. "But we're up here on the peninsula, so it'd be difficult.”

Herman said Grand Traverse Academy is interested in joining, but the school's fledgling athletic program is a year or more away from fielding varsity teams in many of the league's sports.