New 5A puts Capital, Santa Fe in same district

St. Michael’s keeps Las Vegas, N.M. rivals in 3A; small-school landscape rocked

ALBUQUERQUE — Sweeping changes to the high school sports landscape officially took place Thursday in front of a crowded meeting room at the New Mexico Activities Association’s headquarters.

The NMAA board of directors approved a seismic shift that alters the alignment and classification for dozens of schools for the two-year block starting with the 2018-19 academic year.

As expected, the board gave its stamp of approval to eliminate the current six-classification system but to keep a revamped seven-class format for football.

Therein lies the confusion in determining what exactly defines a member of the largest classification.

Capital and Santa Fe High are now part of the same district in every sport in Class 5A, but each was left out of 6A in football. They are joined in most sports by Albuquerque schools Rio Grande, Manzano, Sandia and Albuquerque High, but in football, they are part of a fourteam district that includes Del Norte and Los Alamos.

Decreased enrollment and adjusted classification windows have placed St. Michael’s, West Las Vegas and Robertson into Class 3A while other schools like Pojoaque Valley, Taos and Santa Fe Indian School have moved into the revised 4A to be in the same district as Bernalillo, Los Alamos and Española Valley.

The small-school classes get even trickier. There are seven districts in 2A, a move that potentially causes a logistical nightmare in sports with 12-team state tournament formats. Since all regular-season district champions are awarded automatic playoff bids, it leaves just five at-large spots for the remaining 31 schools.

If a team other than the regular-season champion wins the district tournament, it eats even more at-large bids. There are six districts in 1A, which now has 37 schools.

An NMAA administrator said in the extreme case of 14 teams qualifying for 12 playoff spots ever happens, play-in games for the lowest four seeds would take place to trim the field down to size.

NMAA executive director Sally Marquez said the adjustments were made in an attempt to bring greater competitive balance to several sports.

For example, 2A football had just 10 members but will grow to 18 next year. Class 3A for basketball now has 24 schools and lumps St. Michael’s, Robertson and West Las Vegas into the same district as Santa Fe Prep and Raton.

Marquez said it took nearly two years for a hand-picked realignment committee to come up with the configuration adopted Thursday.

“We worked 20 months on how we wanted to do this, taking every step we could to get it done right and fair,” she said. “We think we came up with something that’s fair and equitable for everyone.”

Schools have been given 72 hours to appeal. The board will hear those appeals on Dec. 7, upon which time all decisions are final.

Thursday’s meeting was attended by more than three dozen coaches, administrators and members of the media.

In short, the revised classifications were determined by a three-year average of 80-day counts for the 2015-16 and 201617 school years and the most recent 40-day count for student enrollments at each school this year. Marquez said her staff used certified figures from the state board of education to ensure fair and accurate disbursement.

It found that Capital and Santa Fe High had identical averages of 1,433 students over the last three years, putting each on the outer edge of what is now the largest of the 5A schools for football. The cutoff for 6A is 1,450.

It also showed that St. Michael’s is firmly within the window for 3A in all sports, even with the 1.3 multiplier assigned to every private school in every sport except football.

That same multiplier ensured that Hope Christian, a longstanding powerhouse in several sports like boys basketball, will move into the second-largest class and join a district that includes Albuquerque Academy, Del Norte, Moriarty, Valley and Highland. The latter two are out of Albuquerque Public Schools, leaving three APS programs below the 5A threshold.

Perhaps the strangest case of all is that of Silver. Classified as a 4A school, it falls into an unusual spot where its nearest football rivals are Ruidoso, Lovington and Grants, all several hours away. The Colts will compete in a 5A district in football but, should they qualify for the playoffs, will enter the 4A draw.

“There’s just no one around them so the easiest and fairest thing to do was put them in a 5A district,” Marquez said.