District track alignments need some tweaking

Imagine you open your refrigerator one day and notice you have run out of soft drinks.

In need of caffeine, you decide to head to the store. One store is two miles away from your house and sells soft drinks for a certain price. Another store 10 miles away sells the same product for more.

You wouldn’t go to the store 10 miles away — it’s a total inconvenience.

Going somewhere further away for the same thing with more burden would just be kind of silly.

Unfortunately, we are faced with such dilemmas occasionally in high school track and field for district competition. People mean well. Some plights can’t be avoided. None of this is done maliciously.

But there comes a time when you stare at the alignments for district and even regional and wonder aloud, “Huh?”

This spring, with all due respect to the good people and decision makers who don’t mean harm, we have a few examples to ponder.

The Kirtland girls are in Division II this year. The closest district to the Hornets, of course, is Perry. But they’re not heading to Perry — no, they’re heading to the D-II Cortland Lakeview District.

Perry is still in Lake County — the same place it’s always been — about 19 miles from Kirtland. Cortland is still on Route 11 northeast of Warren, 51 miles from Kirtland.

Depending on the route the bus drivers elect to take, the Hornets could literally bypass one district to go compete at another.

Now granted, this is not the worst-ever predicament for an area track and field team. The worst was 2011, when Cardinal, Cornerstone Christian and Hawken had to compete at the D-III Tiffin Regional.

That was beyond words — well, at least words that can be used in this space.

Geneva and Kenston are still at the Austintown-Fitch District and not with the rest of our D-I area contingent at Mayfield.

Geneva is 37 miles from Mayfield and 67 miles from Fitch. Kenston is 21 miles from Mayfield and 48 miles from Fitch.

But you know who is at Mayfield? That noted East Side school St. Joseph Academy — East Side if Cuyahoga County and Lorain County suddenly merged for some reason.

Again, it’s not as if someone is sitting in an office with a roll of paper smacking it on a desk declaring, “I’ll show them.” It’s just the way it is. But, by that same token, there’s also a better way.

My wife Jenni always tells me I’m really good at plotting out summer road trips — except for the time I accidentally put us briefly on a one-way road in rural Virginia, but don’t tell anybody.

So I put all the schools in the Northeast District on a map, with the current districts in which they’re competing, and tried to balance it better. Here is what I came up with. In Division I: • Akron Hoban, Copley and Stow-Munroe Falls go to the AustintownFitch District

• John Adams, Revere and St. Joseph Academy go to the Brunswick District

• East Tech (boys), Glenville (boys), Maple Heights, Shaw (girls) and Solon go to the Nordonia District

• All of that shifting would allow Geneva, Hathaway Brown, Kenston and University to move to the Mayfield District

Every D-I district would stay within their maximums of 16 schools each for boys and girls. It would lengthen the drive for some schools vs. what they already have, but it would also take miles off others to balance that out. It would be easier for Akron Hoban to go to Fitch than, say, Geneva, by 23 miles.

In Division II, it’s not as complicated:

• Streetsboro goes to the Bedford District

• Conneaut and LaBrae (boys) go to the Cortland Lakeview District

• Tallmadge goes to the Salem District

• And the Kirtland girls stay in Lake County and go to the Perry District

You would add minimal mileage to Tallmadge’s and Conneaut’s journeys — 12 and 14 miles, respectively — but would cut the others by more than half. Streetsboro’s miles would drop from 37 to 17, and LaBrae’s would drop from 27 to 11. As mentioned earlier, you’d cut 32 miles for Kirtland.

In Division III, with three Northeast districts already overloaded, that’s about as good as it can be.

It’s never going to be perfect — and people are trying as hard as they can to do right by these schools and these coaches and athletes.

And let’s not forget, a lot of these coaches will be spending time at two districts over four days because their boys and girls teams are split by division. So keep a good thought for them.

But alignments play a key role in that.

Every effort should be made — even a little tweaking — to balance the mileage and time considerations across all of Northeast Ohio in an equitable manner.

In other words, the heart of track and field should be able to get to their refrigerator for a soft drink at a decent hour.

They shouldn’t need caffeine to start the journey in the first place.

Lillstrung can be reached at CLillstrung@ News-Herald.com; @ CLillstrungNH on Twitter.

Chris Lillstrung