Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities

NMAA plans return to five classes

Change will take place in 2018-19; conference format under consideration

Two Augusts from now, the New Mexico Activities Association will revert to five classifications after eight years of a six-class format.

Any other detail is just a guess.

The governing body of the state’s prep activities announced the decision following its Wednesday board meeting.

“It’s based on member school feedback,” said Dusty Young, associate director for the NMAA. “We’ve been at it almost 16 months with the committee. A big part of our fall athletic directors conference centered on alignment. The consensus was to go back to five classifications.”

The current alignment will remain in place through the 2017-18 school year. The new format — whatever it looks like — will begin in 2018-19.

“We don’t have anything in place,” Young said, “other than moving back to five classifications.”

For most sports, the NMAA adopted a six-classification format in 2010 by creating Class B for the state’s smallest schools. Four years later, Class B was folded and Class 6A was added; Class B schools were brought back under the umbrella of Class 1A and the majority of schools simply moved up a class.

When the NMAA is again five classifications, prepare for a different look than the five-class format used from 2000-10.

The NMAA’s classification and realignment committee is trying to alleviate the state’s geographic inequities, as much of the population is in the Interstate-25 corridor of Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Las Cruces.

For example, Class 6A’s 24 schools include 14 in the Albuquerque metro area, five within 30 miles of Las Cruces and five other schools who are each at least 55 miles from their nearest 6A counterpart.

That, and the NMAA’s desire to have districts of at least five teams, has Clovis High in a district with Santa Fe High and four Albuquerque schools.

“The consensus was we need to focus on cutting travel and keeping kids in classes,” Young said. “We need to be creative.”

One idea is a conference format. Instead of districts with five to six teams of one classification, there would be conferences featuring nearby teams of two classifications.

Portales High Athletic Director Mark Gallegos, who serves on the committee, said a conference or district would be the same thing for Albuquerque schools. But for others, it means fewer 500-mile round trips.

Using an example of southeastern New Mexico, Gallegos said, “You would have a conference of Clovis, Hobbs, Carlsbad, Roswell, Artesia, Goddard, Lovington and Portales. (New Mexico Miiltary Institute) is iffy because of the numbers; we don’t know where they’ll fall. Clovis, Hobbs, Carlsbad and Roswell would be 5A. The rest would be 4A.”

Elsewhere in the state, Gallegos said, a 4A-3A conference might work better. He added that in football, districts would still exist because the conference format creates safety concerns for smaller schools.

“If you look at it fiscally and time out of class,” Gallegos said, “it helps us in that area. I’m speaking from (the Portales) end of it. There are certain sports that are going to be more competitive than others, but we play most of those guys anyway.”

Gallegos said schools would still compete for championships within their own classifications. Issues on tournament seeding haven’t been tackled yet, Gallegos said, because the committee thought it inappropriate to flesh out details for a conference plan the NMAA hasn’t approved.

The conference idea was tabled Wednesday. Young said the board wasn’t necessarily against conferences, but needs more information.

Whatever alignment the NMAA does go with, Young said, it must be ready to present during the November-December timeframe.