AAA denies Fort Smith schools attempt to stay together

Appeal denied, which makes it official.

Fort Smith Northside and Fort Smith Southside — separated by less than 3 miles — will play in different conferences beginning next season for the first time since 1980.

Nothing is easy in Arkansas, where there are two metropolitan areas and towns of various sizes scattered throughout. Just ask Siloam Springs, which had to travel more than 300 miles one way to El Dorado for a conference game Friday.

That’s right. … a 600-mile round trip for one conference game.

Two measures to keep the Fort Smith schools together failed Thursday during a meeting of the Arkansas Activities Association’s board of directors in North Little Rock. Administrators from the two Fort Smith schools pressed their colleagues from other

Class 7A schools to vote for the measure that would’ve allowed Northside and Southside to both join the 7A-West for the 2020-22 cycle.

Superintendents called superintendents. Principals called principals. Mike Beaumont, the athletic for the Fort Smith Public School District, called other athletic directors.

Yet, the Class 7A schools voted 11-5 against Northside and Southside joining the 7A-West for football. The vote was closer for other sports, but the schools again rejected by the proposed move for

Northside and Southside to the 6A-West by a 9-8 count.

“This rivalry will still happen,” Beaumont said. “We’re still going to play the Northside-Southside game. We just won’t play the last game of the season.”

The schools rejected the measures primarily because having nine teams in one conference and seven teams in the other would’ve created scheduling problems for the Little Rock area schools, as well as add problems toward playoff positioning. With Southside and Northside out, football teams in the 7A-Central would have an extra open date to fill.

Northside football coach Mike Falleur said the problem could’ve been fixed by playing crossover games between teams in the 7A-Central and 7A-West. That’s the way they do it in the SEC where a team like Arkansas plays a full SEC West schedule and rotates a team from the SEC East to complete their conference schedule.

“This could’ve been fixed,” said Falleur, who graduated from Northside in 1980. “We played crossover games between division teams when I coached in Georgia and it worked fine. The AAA should’ve done something ahead of time — before it came to this. It’s a shame they didn’t have the foresight to do something before splitting these two schools 1.6 miles apart.” Yes, it is. So, what now? There is no question dividing Northside and Southside into separate conferences reduces what has long been the state’s best rivalry. It doesn’t get any better than two teams, one town, and a Week 10 showdown in the “Battle of Rogers Avenue.” I covered several of those games, and they were marvelous.

Beaumont is determined to make the best of the situation after the appeal was denied. The obvious choice is to open the season with Northside and Southside and spend weeks promoting the game.

Alma and Van Buren have opened against each other for years, and Prairie Grove and Farmington followed suit more recently after the Cardinals were bumped up to Class 5A for reclassification. Gate receipts are still strong for those games, and the stands were full at Farmington when the Cardinals opened their new stadium against Prairie Grove on Sept. 6.

The problem larger schools in Arkansas have with scheduling became much more difficult in 2006 when the AAA expanded from four to six the number of classifications for football. Instead of the 32 largest schools looped into one, the top 16 in enrollment were placed in Class 7A and the bottom 16 in Class 6A. The change was led by Benton, which convinced the AAA the enrollment gap between schools their size and the larger ones in Little Rock and Northwest Arkansas made it difficult to complete.

Maybe for football, but not for other sports where fewer athletes are needed.

Years later, we’re left with a decision to separate schools less than 3 miles apart for the first time in 40 years. That’s just hard to accept, especially when reducing travel for league games is supposed to be a priority.

“Everybody in Fort Smith wanted us to stay together,” Falleur said. “I don’t know what metrics they used. But this decision could cause even more issues and make people dislike each other.”