And the winning motion is? None!

Earlier this month, the Arkansas Activities Association had their annual summer conference for the purpose of rule and policy changes with four different initiatives on the slate.

Amendment No. 5 would have combined the 32 schools in the 6A and 7A classifications into four 8 team geographical conferences with the 16 biggest teams playing in a 7A state football playoff with the 6A playoffs for the smaller 16 schools. Presumably, all the schools in 6A and 7A would be in the football playoffs.

For all other sports, the 6A and 7A would function as one class. The amendment would have left all other classes (5A, 4A, 3A, 2A and 1A) unchanged. The amendment failed 28-3.

Amendment No. 7 would have left the 7A classification as it was, but would have moved up 16 5A schools into a larger 32 school 6A. Sixteen 4A schools would then move up into 5A with 16 schools moving up into 4A from 3A. Sixteen schools would have been moved up all the way down to 1A that class becoming 16 schools smaller. The amendment failed 122-49.

Amendment No. 8 would have left everything as it would have been for 5A and below but it would have combined the 6A and 7A for all sports except for football. The amendment failed 164-5.

The last amendment, Amendment No. 8, was the one that the Arkansas Athletics Association was pushing for, having voted 12-5 earlier to label it a dopass, an imprimatur that usually insures its passage.

This was the least complicated amendment, leaving the 5A, 4A, 3A, 2A and 1A classes completely intact while just dropping the 7A class, moving them all into the 6A classification.

The AAA must have been stunned as the favored amendment failed 85-84.

Now what?

This season, while the 7A and 6A are listed on the same page as far as conference assignments are concerned, the East and South conferences are made up of all 6A schools with the West and the Central conferences made up of 7A schools. However, on the AAA’s home page, the 2012-2013 season’s conference assignments have the 6A and 7A schools mixed up together in those four conferences.

Siloam Springs, instead of playing with the other6A schools, will get to be hammered by the 7A monsters. The 7A Central will be half 6A schools. The 6A South will have one 7A school (Bryant) among them with the 6A East having three 7A teams in their conference schedule.

However, this arrangement was never approved by the member schools of the AAA so how does it get to be the default position.

It would seem that if nothing changes, Siloam would need to play in the 6A East, meaning games with Jonesboro, Mt. Home, West Memphis, Marion (by West Memphis), two Little Rock teams and Searcy.

It would seem that the Panthers have the choice of athletic suicide by playing the 7A West schedule or financial suicide by playing in the 6A East with the thousands miles of bus travel staring them in the face.

It seems to me that Amendment No. 7 was the best choice although it failed 122-49.

I would guess that the AAA will be meeting to discuss what to do in the face of having their top choice rejected by the membership, although by a narrow margin. It would seem to me that when the AAA membership votes on an amendment and that amendment has no effect on a particular voting school, then perhaps that particular school should not be involved in the voting.

Most likely, the only change that will affect Pea Ridge athletically in thenext cycle will be that Shiloh will no longer be on the schedule as they are moving up to 5A with Lincoln moving into the league to take their place. Shiloh has had a drop in enrollment and actually was placed into the 3A classification.

The Springdale private school disdained playing with the small schools of the 3A-1, choosing instead to join the 5A West, a markedly tougher assignment that the 4A-1. Time will tell if they bit off more than they can chew.

Gibson girls linking up

Although news of this particular sport is hard to come by, it would seem the Lady ’Hawks’ golf team has already gotten some competition under its belt as the 2011 season has begun in earnest. Senior Trilby Gibson lead the team in a match earlier on with sophomore sister Audry Gibson right behind her. I don’t have any stats but would like to get some. The boys team has a big turnout out this year from what I hear.

Watch the heat!

Although the just about unbearable heat has seemed to have abated due to the recent spate of storms and rain, the heat is still a danger to athletes going outdoors to get the various football seasons underway. From the peewees to the high schoolers, students who have been inside a lot this summer won’t be acclimated to play in any kind of heat without taking several precautionary measures. That would mean to keep hydrated and out of the sun except when need be. You can’t be too careful when dealing with the heat because by the time you realize that youmight be in trouble, by that time you are most likely in serious trouble.

I speak as one who knows from experience.

Although growing up in Missouri, I went to college in Searcy, Ark., a decidedly warmer and more humid locale than Monett, Mo. I was on the Harding University cross country team and we were tasked with running seven miles over the top of a local mountain with several severe inclines in 95 degree heat and 98 percent humidity. I managed to cover the course in about 45 minutes and I thought I felt all right until the lasthalf-mile when I started seeing things along with blurred vision. When I crossed the finish line, my skin began to crawl with heat and I discovered that I could not speak or swallow. When I started to collapse, I was set in the back of a van and taken to my dorm room after I weighed in at the gym.

The scales revealed that I had lost seven pounds of sweat that day, an amount not many could lose and talk about later.

I found out later on that I was in the last stages of a heat stroke right up to the point where a person loses consciousness whenthe heart stops. If I had not have been a runner for eight years prior to that day, I would have probably become one of those statistics you read about in the newspapers.

The point I would like to make is that by the time you realize that you are in trouble with heat problems, you have already skated too close to theedge of eternity. The best thing is to avoid even getting on that path.

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Editor’s note: John Mc-Gee is the art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, coaches elementary track and writes a regular sports column for The Times. He can be contacted through The Times at [email protected].