SEK split east-west; TRL 11-man gets full league slate

The Kansas State High School Activities Association (KSHSAA) released district assignments for the 2018 and 2019 football seasons on Wednesday, after which schools began trying to fill the open spots on their schedules.

How those spots will be filled depend on what classifcation a school was assigned to at the beginning of the week as football classes now have different numbers of schools and different playoff formats.

The Southeast Kansas League:

Class 4A will become a single division of 32 schools and will adopt the same playoff system that is in place in classes 6A and 51. Districts will no longer exist. The state has been split into east and west regions of 16 teams each but no teams are mandated to play any other. When the eight-game regular season concludes, the two regions will be seeded one through 16 and playoffs will begin in week nine.

Every Southeast Kansas League school, excluding Parsons, will be a Class 4A school in the next two seasons. They will be able to schedule anyone they wish to at any time they wish to. However, Parsons will not be playing a league schedule. That school was assigned to the new version of Class 3A, which will have 48 schools. The new 3A will be made up of what is now Class 4A-Division II with the top 16 schools from the current 3A added in.

In Class 3A and below, the district system will continue. And in classes 3A and 2A, there will be eight six-team districts. The top four finishers in each will qualify for the playoffs. The bottom two in each will be paired up against the bottom two from a neighboring district to play one more regular-season game in week nine, when all the other schools will be playing their first-round playoff games.

Due to that district structure, Parsons has to play its last five games of the eight-game regular season within its district. The Vikings will play in Class 3A-District 1 with CNC League members Baxter Springs, Columbus, Frontenac and Galena and Tri Valley League member Caney Valley. This leaves only the first three games of the regular season open for Parsons to schedule other teams and USD 503 superintendent Linda Proehl announced last Friday that Parsons will not play agains any competition that is not in Class 3A. This means that Parsons has withdrawn itself from Southeast Kansas League football for at least the next two seasons.

The status of Pittsburg in league football is unclear as it did not schedule each of the other remaining teams. This might leave SEK football with only five teams playing a league schedule: Fort Scott, Chanute, Coffeyville, Independence and Labette County. Pittsburg has scheduled Fort Scott and Labette County (and, for some reason, Ulysses).

In order to balance the regions, Coffeyville and Independence will be considered west teams for playoff purposes while the other four are east teams. The other east teams are Atchison, Baldwin, Basehor-Linwood, Bishop Miege, Bonner Springs, Eudora, Kansas City-Piper, Louisburg, Ottawa, Paola, Spring Hill and Tonganoxie.

The other west teams are Abilene, Andover Central, Arkansas City, Augusta, Buhler, El Dorado, Goddard, McPherson, Mulvane, Rose Hill, Towanda-Circle, Ulysses, Wellington and Winfield. Ulysses, which will be on Labette County and Pittsburg’s schedules the next two years, is the only Class 4A school west of Hutchinson.

The Three Rivers League:

The Three Rivers League had some good fortune when its three members that will be playing Class 2A football were assigned to the same district. Area schools Uniontown and Northeast play in that league.

Class 2A, like 3A, will have eight six-team districts which leaves only the first three games of those teams’ schedules open for other opponents. The new Class 1A, which is pretty much the current Class 2-1A with a new name, retains the current district system. There will be 31 schools playing in Class 2-1A, meaning there will be seven four-team districts and one three-team district.

Northeast will play in Class 2A-District 1 with current league member Jayhawk-Linn and newcomer Southeast. Also in that district will be Erie and Humboldt of the Tri Valley League and Riverton of the CNC.

Uniontown will play in Class 1A-District 1, which will include league rivals Pleasanton and Yates Center and CNC member Colgan. Pleasanton, returning to 11-man football, swaps places with Oswego, which has chosen to play eight man.

The TRL was able to map things out to that the six 11-man schools can play a full league schedule with the 2A schools playing the 1A schools in the first three weeks of the season. Then the schools in the same class will face each other in their districts.

Had any one of the 2A teams or any one of the 1A teams been assigned to a different district, a full league schedule would have been impossible.

The one 1A district with three teams, in case one is curious, is District 8 which has Elkhart, Stanton County and Syracuse.

Oswego won’t be able to play a league schedule as it is the only TRL member in Eight-Man Division I. That class has 48 schools which will be grouped into eight six-team districts. Meanwhile, Altoona-Midway, Chetopa, Crest, Marmaton Valley and St. Paul are in Eight-Man Division II District 1 along with Southern Coffey County of the Lyon County League. Eight-Man Division II has 52 schools and will have four districts with seven teams and four districts with eight.

Oswego is in Eight-Man Division I District I with five South Central Border League schools, Central-Burden, Howard-West Elk, Roaslia-Flinthills, Sedan and the Cedar Vale/Dexter co-op.