9 questions with Iowa High School Athletic Association Executive Director Rick Wulkow

Iowa High School Athletic Association Executive Director Rick Wulkow was kind enough to sit down for a short chat during last week's state baseball tournament in Des Moines.Wulkow has been with the IHSAA since 1980, including five years as executive director. A Lytton native, Wulkow was recently appointed president-elect of the National Federation of High School Associations.Here's the interview with Wulkow in its entirety.

Q: Tell me about the national appointment and how you feel about it?

A: It's one of those things that you kind of dream about maybe when you're in our business. There aren't very many of us, there's only 51 state associations, including the District of Columbia. There are eight sections across the country, and the board appointments are four-year terms. For instance, in section four there are five states, so every 20 years, Iowa has an opportunity to even have a board member. Then to have your colleagues and peers elect you to be the chairperson of a board such as that is probably one of the neatest things that has happened to me in my professional career. Other than maybe being named executive director of the Iowa High School Athletic Association. I'm humbled by it.

Q: How has the economy affected the IHSAA? How have you dealt with that?

A: This past year we noticed the affects of the economy, especially at the state tournament level. Less Harrison Barnes, of course. That was an incredible thing at the state basketball tournament. But it's not that we're down a lot. We still had a good fiscal year. But all of our tournaments were down some. You can go back and look at weather, you can look at matchups, the teams that are in and all those types of things that we always do. But when you look at it over the full year, people probably aren't traveling quite as much. The teams farther away from the sites probably don't have as many fans. The cost of gas, the overnights stays, things like that. So it had a little impact, but we had such a good year two years ago. We had a good year, but not quite as good as two years ago.”

Q: How concerned are you about schools finding enough money to run their activities programs?

A: That's one of the biggest things we all face. The schools in our membership are certainly concerned about keeping a close eye on the costs they have for travel, getting to tournaments and things of that nature. We want to help them as much as we can, but on the other hand, there are limits as to what we can do. When you look at our revenue versus our non-revenue sports, we can do a little bit more for them in the revenue sports as opposed to the ones that aren't going to make any money. The thing is that I hope we don't have to cut programs and take away opportunities for kids. Participation activities are such a great thing. The values that they learn, all the positive things that come from them. I just hope that we can continue to find ways to keep the programs viable.The other thing we're faced with are sharing programs, mergers, reconsolidations. That's something a lot of these smaller districts are going to be faced with because of the economy and the school finance issues that they have. Trying to maintain the programs they have to have to be a viable school and provide a good education. Those are definitely concerns and one of the bigger things that we and our membership face.

Q: The classifications have stayed the same for the most part for a long time, but the number of programs have continued to dwindle. Will there be changes in the number of classes for each sport anytime soon?

A: We activated our classification committee for the first time in about 12 years this year. Just to start looking and studying at enrollments, variances in enrollments, schools within classifications, the success of different quadrants of schools within that classification. Then the other thing we did was this (recent) football playoff committee meeting is appoint a sub-committee to look at football classifications. Because of the growth of 8-player and the demise of Class A football. We all know that when we have less schools in a class, especially when you play district football and you're always playing against schools in your own class, you've got the greater travel to get games. As 8-player grows and Class A gets smaller, that's something we really have to take a hard look at.So we've made up a committee of members' administrators, athletic directors and coaches of all the classifications: Class A, 1A, 2A, 3A, 4A. They've had one meeting already that was kind of a brainstorming session to let us know what data they want us to collect. They'll be coming in in the next month to study some of the data that we've collected for them t0 look at if we want to stay with five 11-player classes and one 8-player class. Or whether we want to expand the enrollment cap in 8-player to allow more schools to move to 8-player if they want to. We're seeking that type of information for them. I know in some of our surrounding states, they do have multiple classes in 8-player where they have their very smallest schools and the next level of small schools is in another class. Those are all things that we are looking at, and I'll have a much better answer sometime during this next school year.When we did a survey a year and a half ago, basically our schools told us that they were satisfied with the classifications in each of our sports. But that was a survey asking have we done a good job of classifying schools and things of that nature. I think we probably have. But as the big picture changes, we've got to study those things. Look at those things.

Q: Have you studied much the success of parochial schools as well? There are some grumblings out there that parochial schools have an unfair advantage, particularly in the smaller classes.

A: The classification committee first met two years ago. They wanted to meet every other year. And they addressed the parochial school issue – or the non-boundary school issue – two years ago. Because there were some grumblings out there, as you said. People were maybe concerned about the success some of the schools were having. As (the committee) looked at what options they had, they backed away and felt any changes they would make would be detrimental to all the programs. Their thing was maybe it's more of a socio-economic thing than it is a private or public thing. They got into looking at the success of the suburban-type schools, some of the higher socio-economic districts, and some of them were having as much or more success than the non-public schools.So they have taken a hard look at that. That committee is made up of administrators of schools from all classifications … of public and non-public schools. So that is something we continue to monitor and keep an eye on.

Q: Will the Iowa High School Athletic Association and Iowa Girls' High School Athletic Union ever combine?

A: You say ever? Yeah, it'll happen some day. To be straight out honest. Rick Wulkow's opinion. You know 20 years ago, 30 years ago when I (first) came into the office, I thought it would happen during my time. Now I'm not sure that it will. But I think there's going to be a time when it will be necessary. The thing that I look at right now, just to be straight out, is we look at what our schools are going through with their mergers and putting programs together and stuff, we need to take a look at it. But that's got to be membership driven.We've had committees and ad-hoc groups look at this before on two or three occasions since I've been with the Athletic Association, which is 30 years now. They've always come back and felt that what we're both doing is to the benefit of the students that are involved and the programs. If we can make it work the way we're doing it, then so be it. But it's something that is continued to be looked at. To answer your question, I think there will be one day where we'll have one activities association.

Q: You've proven with the state track meet, for instance, that you can work together, right?

A: Absolutely. State track, cross country, bowling now. I'm not sure that there might be a day when soccer might be a co-ed type of tournament situation. With the facilities that we have and the multiple fields that we have available and the calendars that we have, if we can put those things together and do it in one weekend instead of two weekends, it's good.

Q: Do you think kids should transfer high schools strictly for athletics reasons?

A: No. I think open enrollment was put in place for the right reasons, even though we all know that some of the open enrollment is done for other than academic reasons, for educational purposes. When you look at our role, our purpose, our mission for our students in high school, it's for participation and providing programs. I couldn't be happier when one of our kids gets a scholarship. Harrison Barnes is a a great example, with the publicity the state of Iowa got. You couldn't have had a better role model than Harrison, to have that status and carry that thing on. And you can name a lot of other athletes over in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Eastern Iowa area that have been great athletes. I couldn't be more pleased for them.But it's not our mission to have elite athletes. Our mission is to provide programs for all kids that want to participate. We can proudly say that … if you include fine arts and music and speech and drama and all of those things, 80 percent of our kids are involved in activities. A lot higher percentage in some schools than others. But that's what our role is. For students to strictly transfer for (athletic purposes), there are other tools that they can use within the schools to have opportunity for those programs. Through sharing programs and things of that nature.

Q: It seems like the multi-sport athlete, especially in the bigger schools, is a thing of the past. Is that an unfortunate thing, in your opinion?

A: Yeah, it is. I had that conversation with a gentleman today. Putting a whole year into one sport has really been the demise of some of our other programs. The participation numbers in some of our other programs. An example is right out here tonight. Solon is going to play in a state championship baseball game. I can guarantee there are players who were on the state championship football team, there are basketball players who were on their state championship game basketball team. Harlan is another fine example of that. Valley of West Des Moines have their head coaches involved in assisting in other sports. They are getting their football players into track and baseball and some of those other sports. I just think that there is too emphasis put on specialization.Again, that's my opinion. I'm a little old farm boy who grew up in Western Iowa and lettered in four sports and played three sports in college. The multi-sport thing is still in the best interests of everybody. It's good for the school, it's good for the kid to have other options and opportunities.