Cheers and Jeers

Coaches see change as inevitable as WIAA football redistricting plan is shot down

Posted by Steven L. Tietz on Feb. 5, 2010 | 1 comment

Germantown, Homestead, Wauwatosa East, Brookfield East, and Franklin football

When it comes down to the WIAA’s highly successful 34-year old state football playoff series and its needed modifications, it is as Germantown head coach Phil Datka said:

"We can’t have our cake and eat it too."

No, the state’s football coaches can’t. There are just too many issues on the plate right now with too many competing voices.

The WIAA’s Board of Control kicked it back to the coaches association late last month after defeating the redistricting plan by an 8-2 count.

In its rejection, the WIAA asked its own executive staff to create football-only conferences for the most in-need members and it will revamp the current end-of-season scheduling, which has teams playing three games in a 10-day span, from the last game of the regular season through the second-round of the playoffs.

Like WIAA staff have said: "They succeeded in getting a conversation started."

And something will come out of it despite the uneasiness of coaches and athletic directors with change of any sort.

Surveying the Wisconsin Football Coaches Association (WFCA) polls on proposed solutions, WIAA Deputy Director Wade Labecki noticed that most of the membership were widely against almost all the ideas.

That situation is untenable, he said.

"Something will have to be prepared," Labecki said, "and the Board of the Control will have a look at it."

Meanwhile, the conversation continues, such as on the scheduling issue, which is being revamped for the long-term health of the players.

"We’ve never advanced past the second round of the playoffs," said WFCA Hall of Fame member Tom Swittel from Wauwatosa East about the scheduling issue. "because we were always out of gas."

But past president of WFCA, Homestead’s Dave Keel, didn’t see a problem with the current schedule. His teams have failed to advance past the second round of the playoffs only twice since 2001.

"There’s no evidence supporting the assertion that that’s unreasonable," he said of the three games in 10 days scenario. "If that’s the case, why do we have three hockey games in three days, or three soccer games in three days or three basketball games for that matter (all are state tournament scenarios)?"

"…We ask the WIAA for evidence, but they don’t have it. If you have a concern over injuries please present it, but just don’t say there’s a problem and not tell us why it is a problem."

But Keel’s old rival, Germantown’s Phil Datka does see the problem.

"I’d love to minimize the impact on the kids," he said. "Studies are saying a 1,000 little hits are as traumatic as two or three big hits. If we can change it, I’d be all in favor."

And that’s just one issue. The current playoff situation and conference alignment will remain in place next fall, but the WIAA would like changes in place by 2011. Coaches will have four options to deal with some of the current scheduling problems.

*The regular season could be reduced to eight games giving teams more time to prepare for the playoffs.

*Practice could be moved up four days further stretching out the schedule.

*The scrimmage could be eliminated (most people spoken to did not like this idea at all).

*Or the state finals at Camp Randall could be moved back to the weekend after Thanksgiving.

Labecki said that that final option was recently put in jeopardy by the Big 10 Conference moving its collegiate football schedule back a week, potentially putting the finals in conflict every year with a Wisconsin home game.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The original redistricting plan was to put schools of equal size in the same rough geographic area into eight-team leagues (separate from the other conference sports, which would remain the same).

But transportation costs (mostly for outstate schools) involved in that plan were a primary reason the Board of Control shot down the overall redistricting.

"The district plan took care of all of the issues," said WIAA Associate Director Deb Hauser. "We knew that smaller schools were falling by the wayside (when it came to qualifying for the playoffs out of conferences with bigger schools), but the travel costs just got so high."

"Medium to small schools are just so strapped right now."

So the Milwaukee area will still have football conferences next fall with teams from three disparate enrollment divisions (the North Shore and the Classic 8 being chief among them), creating potential hardships for the smallest schools in those leagues.

"It’s all based on the ability to make the playoffs," said Swittel, whose school is the smallest in the Greater Metro and whose team is almost always the smallest (30-35 varsity players at the best) in the league. "…No one had any idea of how difficult this would be. We just have to be creative and find a way to make it work."

Swittel did find it interesting in the polling of his own area coaches that most division 1 schools (with the largest enrollments) were not in favor of the original plans, while the division 2 and 3 schools were.

"What can you draw from that?" he asked.

Another issue is maintaining area rivalries. Both redistricting plans did away with a lot of the traditional games that make fall Friday nights a joy.

Homestead would have been shifted well north and west of its traditional rivals in the North Shore and other schools had similar problems.

"I honestly like being in the Greater Metro Conference," said Brookfield East coach Sal Logue. "I’ve been associated with it most of my life."

But then he saw the handwriting on the wall.

"There are always going to be good years and not so good years for you," he added, "but it gets hard maintaining success. The Elmbrook district is declining. In three or four years we’ll be down to 1,100-1,200 students while other schools in the conference like Falls, Marquette and Hamilton will go up to 1,600-1,700 and so a plan like this makes sense."

"Football is different, numbers do count."

"My idea would be to keep some rivalries for the first couple of weeks of the season, but in my mind the idea of keeping my kids competitive trumps all other issues. Give your kids the best chance possible (to make the playoffs)."

The re-arranging of freshmen and junior varsity schedules was also considered a nightmare, noted some coaches, as the school’s original conference schedules would remain in place for them, making coaches work with multiple gameplans, while having athletic directors work up additional (and more costly) bus schedules.

The original redistricting plan was first proposed late last summer and it got one major revision when schools objected to where they were placed. It then went through a series of procedural votes.

The Board of Control vote became predictable after the WIAA’s Advisory Council unanimously turned down the plan. That was after Sports Advisory Committee voted 11-2 against it.

Interestingly enough, the Football Coaches Advisory Committee voted 6-1 in favor of continuing discussion on the plan back in December.

Franklin Athletic Director Don Kurth felt the whole process had a rushed feel to it.

"Normally the WIAA is so methodical and detailed, sometimes to the ‘Nth’ degree about things," he said. "They started this process, then we didn’t hear much about it for awhile and then all these votes came up so quickly."

"We (the schools) want a viable option, just don’t rush us into something. They’re (the WIAA) normally so methodical, but this all felt so hasty. I wanted to say ‘What’s the rush?’ If they wanted to get everyone’s attention, they certainly got it."

Datka, who coached Kurth back in the mid-1980s, and who started his 40-plus year career back when playoffs weren’t even a topic tossed about during post-game bull sessions, had his own ideas.

"I’d personally like to revisit the all-play format (for the playoffs)," he said. "It would solve some problems but not all of them. You’d still have the Milwaukee problem (a noted lack of competitiveness in the playoffs over the last 20 years), but maybe you could seed some teams to avoid some bad match-ups (an idea Hauser didn’t like for the distinct advantage it brought to the rested team)."

"But whatever district you take teams out of, you’re losing an allegiance with people and that can be a nightmare for coaches."

"One thing is for certain, we’re not going to get everything our way."

The thought that getting a consensus on the next plan will be difficult was an idea everyone could agree with.

"This is going to be a tough decision anyway you cut it," said Logue.