Reputed Failure Repudiated

A group of sportswriters found their preseason all-area selections temporarily upstaged July 31 when word came in that Proposal 9, which drastically alters high school athletics, failed.

The reason given in the text with 141 in favor and 68 against was due to lack of a two-thirds majority required to change the Arkansas Activities Association Handbook.

Article X, Section 2 of the AAA handbook, states a proposal will be adopted with a two-thirds majority of those voting.

Seated at the table were veteran journalists, including Henry Apple, resident expert on Proposal 9, many with more than 30 years experience. Combined they represent more than 200 years of covering sports. These guys are fact-checkers, accustomed to verifying quotes and vetting sources.

Immediately someone began calculating the percentage and quickly deduced that couldn’t be right.

The sportswriters gathered at Fayetteville could only guess at what was happening at the Arkansas Activities Association’s governing body annual meeting held at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock. Across the board there was awareness that the impact of passing Proposal 9 would vastly restructure the classification format in all sports except football, but the voting numbers didn’t add up.

Proposal 9 changed the AAA handbook, thus requiring a two-thirds of the vote from participating schools in order to pass. According to AAA rules, written ballots are given to each voting representative upon signing in at the meeting. Voting power rests with the superintendent, who may authorize in writing an assistant/ deputy superintendent, or principal or assistant principal as the voting representative for each member school. The rules stipulate an individual shall represent only one school.

Proposal 9 submitted by Clarksville High School, would do away with blended conferences mixing 6A and 5A, pitting Farmington head-to-head in league battles with Greenwood, Russellville and Siloam Springs, as well as 4A/3A conference clashes between the likes of Prairie Grove vs. Greenland, for example. Problems resulted in district tournament seeding and All-Conference selections because some league teams never played each other.

Proposal 9 received a “do-pass recommendation” by the AAA Board of Directors, so there was a general surprise at the initial

reputed outcome of the vote.

The numbers were punched up in a calculator and it was obvious — the proposal should have passed with 67.4 percent of the 209 administrators voting in favor.

In basketball, we’d call that a correctable error, and not many minutes thereafter the AAA corrected the error.

Meanwhile, the sportswriters speculated, perhaps the original vote’s percentage was figured based on the number of administrators, who were given a ballot — not the 209 who actually cast a ballot. Using those numbers (216 ballots distributed), the percentage arrived at 65.2 percent which wouldn’t have been enough to pass.

Turns out the hunch was correct.

The original vote’s percentage was calculated with 216 ballots distributed instead of the 209 votes on the proposal. The Arkansas Democrat Gazette reported AAA Executive Director Lance Taylor asked former Vilonia athletic director Ed Sellers, whose school voted against the proposal, to help recount the votes.

With the recount completed, AAA President John Ciesla, of Greenwood, made a second announcement, repudiating the first, declaring the proposal passed on an identical 141-68 vote with 67.4 percent of the 209 administrators voting in favor.

Proposal 9 will be effective for the 2018-2020 classification cycle. Locally, Farmington continues as a 5A football school, but returns to 4A for every other sport. Lincoln, meanwhile continues as a 4A football school, but drops to Class 3A for other sports. The Wolves could return to the 3A-1 which they left in the fall of 2012. Elkins will also play 4A football, but joins Lincoln in 3A for other sports.

Voting and baseball are part of the American tradition.

Long live the full count. Long live the recount. Short-lived will be the countdown until football season kicks off.

In the immortal words of Hank Williams Jr., “Are you ready for some football?”