Iowa high schools without an athletic conference seek solution from state lawmakers

DES MOINES — With roughly a half-dozen Iowa high schools’ athletic teams finding themselves homeless when it comes to playing in a conference, some state lawmakers believe it is time for the state’s high school sports associations to take on the role of mediator.

A proposal at the Iowa Capitol would by state law require the Iowa High School Athletic Association and the Iowa Girls High School Athletics Union to create conference realignment committees to ensure all the state’s public and private high schools are members of conferences for athletic competition. High school football games are not affected, but other sports are.

The proposed legislation is backed by the Decorah school district — whose conference disbands next school year — and the Waverly Shell-Rock school district, which lost its conference this academic year. As independents, the schools face difficulty scheduling enough games to fill out a full season, and some of the games independent districts are able to schedule involve inordinately long travel times.

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“When you find yourself like our community of Waverly-Shell Rock, not finding a conference for multiple years now, it is a black eye in our community,” Waverly-Shell Rock High School Principal Brady Weber said during a recent legislative hearing on the proposal at the Iowa Capitol. “It’s not something that we’ve found to be our fault, but here we are in a situation that we’re just seeking a solution.”

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Under the current system, if a school is not accepted into an athletics conference, it can protest and go through mediation with the state education department or the appropriate state athletics association. Mediators are allowed only to determine whether the school should be accepted into the conference it has requested; the mediators are not able to propose alternative placements.

As they have sought to join other conferences, Decorah has been through mediation twice and Waverly-Shell Rock three times with no resolution, the school’s respective leaders said.

Under the proposed state law, the IHSAA and IGHSAU would be required to establish committees to manage and approve all conference realignments to ensure that all schools that wish to play in a conference are able.

The proposal is modeled after the system used by Wisconsin’s high school athletics association.

“In the end, we just hope that no sets of students or community, if they’re willing to be a part of a conference, are left without,” Adam Riley, Decorah High School’s associate principal and activities director, said during one of the legislative hearings on the proposal.

The proposal appears in a pair of identical pieces of legislation being considered by lawmakers in the Iowa Legislature. If approved by both the Iowa Senate and Iowa House and signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds, the proposal would become state law.

The bills, Senate File 265 and House File 331, both have advanced through the first two steps of the lawmaking process: they both have been approved by subcommittees and committees. Both are now eligible for debate by the full Senate and House.

Tom Keating, the IHSAA’s executive director, said during the legislative hearings that both state athletic organizations appreciate the difficult situation in which schools like Decorah and Waverly-Shell Rock find themselves. Keating said the organizations are not taking a position on the bill but are willing to work with lawmakers to pass something that improves the conference realignment system.

“The current law does tie our hands when we are the mediation team that recommends to the director (that) either a school goes into a conference or school does not, but we have no alternative. If we feel Conference A where they apply is not conducive or is not a good fit, we can’t say, ‘But you would fit here. So we are going to recommend that you go here.’ We don’t have that opportunity right now,” Keating said.

“This bill addresses this and gives an opportunity to place a school in a conference,” Keating added.

Rep. Skyler Wheeler, a Republican from Hull, said Western Christian High School in Hull was left out of a conference and had to fill its schedule with games in Omaha and the Des Moines suburbs, both of which created multiple-hour road trips each way.

“The biggest thing for me, just seeing this up front with Western, has been just how unfortunate it’s been for these kids,” Wheeler said during the legislative hearing in the House. “When I look at this and look at this legislation, all I think about the entire time is these kids, the travel that’s required, the time away.”

No lobbying organization is registered in support of or in opposition to the proposal, according to state lobbying records. It is up to Republican leaders in each chamber whether the proposal will be debated further this session.

Comments: (515) 355-1300, erin.murphy@thegazette.com

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