Van Buren ready for classification move
Van Buren will head in different directions when its athletic teams play conference games over the next two years, and athletic director Randy Loyd hopes it stays that way for quite a long time.
Van Buren, the smallest public school in the state’s largest classification for a number of years, drops to Class 6A for football and Class 5A for other sports when the Arkansas Activities Association’s 2020-22 reclassification cycle goes into effect this fall.
With Little Rock Southwest opening in August, Van Buren expected to make this move — the first since Bentonville West opened in 2016 and caused West Memphis to fall out of Class 7A status. When the AAA released its enrollment numbers last May, it was revealed that Jonesboro had moved ahead of Van Buren, as well.
“We were in Class 6A a couple of times when everything went 7A,” Loyd said. “We really liked it when we did that. It’s tough when you have the lowest enrollment among 7A schools. Granted, our coaches and students never complained about it, and a lot of our kids probably didn’t even know it. Our coaches knew it, and some in our community knew it.
“It’s a tough classification to play, year in and year out when your numbers are the lowest. Hopefully we can stay in this 6A/5A conference for a long time instead of staying in it for a couple of years and moving right back up.”
All Van Buren had to do to travel to conference games for the past four years was drive Interstate 49 north for the seven schools in Northwest Arkansas, but that won’t be the case in the new league. The Pointers will still head north for their 6A-West Conference football opener against Siloam Springs, but their journeys will also consist of trips to Greenwood, Russellville, Mountain Home, Benton, Little Rock Parkview and Lake Hamilton for the next two years.
The travel won’t be as extensive for the remaining sports teams as they play in the 5A-West Conference. Van Buren will exchange the trips to Benton, Parkview and Lake Hamilton for shorter journeys to Alma, Greenbrier and Vilonia.
“Our conference schedule was handed to us by the league, and with our association with the 6A-West Conference, we were able to fill our nonconference schedule easily,” girls basketball coach Chris Bryant said. “We’re looking forward to renewing the rivalry with our neighbors at Alma.
“We’ve also been so fluid and mobile with the conferences we’ve
been in over the years that we’ve been able to make some friends to a good portion of west and west-central Arkansas.”
The new conference alignments will mean additional travel for Van Buren’s teams. The 175-mile trips Van Buren’s teams will take to Mountain Home are more than double the distance of their current longest trip of 82.7 miles to Bentonville West.
Loyd said it could have been much worse had it not been for changes in the conference alignments that come with the reclassification cycle. Parkview and Mountain Home join Van Buren as 6A-West newcomers and replace Sheridan and El Dorado, both of
which go to the 6A-East.
“The only drawback is the travel,” Loyd said. “We have to go to Mountain Home and go to Greenbrier and Vilonia on the 5A side of that, but we’re OK with that. It’s going to give our kids that chance to compete at a high level in those classifications. That’s what our kids want, and that’s what our coaches went.
“We might be talking differently if we had to make those long trips to Sheridan and El Dorado. The trips we will make are doable, and we’re excited about it. I’m not sure if our travel money will double, but it will cost more. The school has always been for us when it comes to travel and paying for it.”
Van Buren has already been given a reprieve when it comes to travel during its basketball season. The scheduling was set up in a way where the longer trips to Mountain Home, Vilonia and Greenbrier will be on Fridays, while the shorter trips such as Siloam Springs, Greenwood and Alma will take place on Tuesdays.
“That will be a huge benefit for our kids,” Bryant said. “Now they can be better prepared, more rested and ready to go in Wednesday morning classes. We didn’t have that benefit years ago when our teams would have to play at Cabot or Bryant on a Tuesday night.”