The Alaska School Activities Association has approved a request from the Juneau School District to combine its high school football teams and cheer squads beginning next fall.
The request was approved by a 4-1 vote at Thursday’s ASAA Board of Directors meeting. It allows the district to combine the Juneau-Douglas Crimson Bears and Thunder Mountain Falcons into one team. That means TMHS students will be able to play for JDHS while remaining enrolled at their own school.
Director of Student Services Bridget Weiss said the district must wait for a decision on which conference the team will play in. The combined TMHS and JDHS student bodies will likely bump the team up a division, she said.
“Once we know what conference we’re in, that will give us some information to start formulating what the season is going to look like both fiscally and logistically,” Weiss said. “And then we’ll move through the process of working with kids and families and coaches in order to put together a plan for the fall.”
Weiss said the primary reasons the district made its request had to do with safety and participation concerns. The number of students signing up to play football for both Juneau teams has declined in recent years, forcing coaches to play younger, less-experienced students against teams with older and larger players.
Both teams were also operating at a deficit at the beginning of the 2017 season: TMHS had a negative account balance of more than $100,000 while JDHS was short almost $6,000.
The sole vote against the motion came from board representative Andrew Friske. Friske is the residential and activities principal at Mt. Edgcumbe High School in Sitka and represents Region 5, which is Juneau’s region. He said other schools in the region were concerned that Juneau’s request would leave other teams at a disadvantage.
In the past, schools traveling to play Juneau teams have then taken the ferry to play Ketchikan. Changing divisions would alter that, Friske said.
“Combining programs would cause them to possibly bump up into the large school division, leaving Ketchikan the only school down in Region 5. And I think that was the main reason why 10 of the schools did not support this,” he said.
Executive Director of ASAA Billy Strickland said there was some concern at Thursday’s meeting that this decision could set a precedent for other Alaska schools.
“Other states for quite a while have had the ability for even their larger schools to co-op in order to save costs and so forth,” Strickland said. “So while it’s precedent-setting, I believe overall the board doesn’t believe that’s a bad thing.”
Strickland added that the decision means the board will have to take a look at its classification system for high school football. ASAA currently has three divisions determined by school size, but it may need to adjust that in order to balance the number of schools at each level.
Weiss pointed out that of the 20 schools in the Southeast region that weighed in on the school district’s request, only three have football programs. Two of those are Juneau’s. The other is Ketchikan.
“And that speaks volumes to how challenging it is to find the capacity to run football out of Southeast Alaska,” Weiss said.
Weiss said the district will know which conference the team will play in later in the month.
