PEA RIDGE — The thing is BIG
Somehow, looking on the outside of the new athletics practice building doesn’t really accurately convey to anyone the sheer size of it unless you step over and peer through the open doorways or windows.
Since my art classroom in the Primary School building is just out the door to the new facility, I ambled over there Sunday afternoon after checking on what art supplies I will be needing when school starts again next month. The contractors haven’t finished enclosing the front part of the building and there is a lot of work to do these last two weeks of July on the “big room.” What is there isimpressive.
The floor has been smoothed up with small gravel in preparation of placing the other layers, culminating with an artificial turf on top. Looking across the building from the southeast doorway, the northwest doorway looksfar, far away. The ceiling is very high, and outside of punting, anything the football team needs to do practice wise, can be done in this building.
Outside of Shiloh, I don’t think anyone else in the 4A-1 will have a practice area this nice. This will not only be a boon for the football team, the ’Hawks’ softball and baseball teams will greatly benefit as well as the track teams.
A place to escape the intense heat or cold or rain will make ’Hawk practices much more productive, not to mention the benefit to the health of the kids involved.
AAA votes next week
The Arkansas Activities Association will be votingon next week’s realignment motions that have been put before it. While the AAA recommends to the member schools bills that should or not pass, each school in the state can send a superintendent (or the designee) to cast its vote.
The AAA wants to combine the 7A and the 6A together into a 32-team, four-conference classification. They make a great argument for combining these 32 schools together, but isn’t this the same organization that argued to split the top classification into what it became?
There is a stat sheet that bolsters the AAA position pointing out that of the eight states surrounding Arkansas, we are only ones with 16 schools in their top classification. Mississippi, Missouri and Oklahoma have 32 schools in their top class with Tennessee next with 50, Louisiana with 57, Alabama with 62 and Texas with a whopping 245. But, these were the same statsthat existed when the AAA went to the current alignment. I think the decision to go to a 16-team division was driven by the AAA’s need or perceived need to raise more money. Having more state tournaments, regionals, etc., has raised the income of the AAA so the plan was successful in that regard. The unintended consequence (if it mattered) of the last realignment was to raise the cost of travel for a lot of the AAA member schools.
Of course, Arkansas isn’t Texas, it isn’t Missouri or even Oklahoma when you consider total population.
Arkansas is the smallest state with 2.5 million people while the three closest are Mississippi (2.8 million), Oklahoma (2.9 million) and Louisiana (3.5 million). Missouri has twice the number of high schools in their top classification but they have more than twice as many people living in their state (6.1 million).
The other alignmentplan on the table, put forth by Siloam Springs, would leave the 7A alone, but would move 16 5A schools into 6A, and 16 4A schools into 5A, leaving the 6A, 5A and 4A classifications all with 32 teams. Between the two plans, a sizable minority supports the plan drawn up by Siloam as opposed to the majority of the AAA officials (by a 12-5 count) supporting the first mentioned plan above.
Personally, I favor Siloams’ plan as it would work favorably for the 4A schools left in that class.
The other plan will doom Siloam to years of cellar dwelling as they would be joining the 7A West and they lack the facilities, student enrollment and background to be successful on that level until far into the future.
Interesting side note.
Bentonville High School with 2,416 students is bigger than any high school in Alabama, Louisiana or Mississippi.
Bowling going up?
High school bowling in Arkansas is steadily growing and there is a bill before the AAA member schools to change the bowling classifications. There are currently three classes: 7A-6A, 5A-4A, and 3A-2A-1A. The vote is to break the divisions up to match the other sports, a vote I support.
The AAA opposes the idea as it will probably not raise any more money but would cost more in the purchase of trophies. I think the stated reason is that they lack the participating schools but as is often the case, schools don’t tend to want to add sports where they will have to compete with much larger schools.
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Editor’s note: John McGee 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 prtnews@ nwaonline.com.
Sports, Pages 8 on 07/20/2011