Published: March 23, 2016
Fair or unfair?
Area AD says private schools have bad rap
By NICHOLAS DETTMANN
Daily News
A perceived advantage for nonpublic schools in the WIAA
membership is misleading, unfair and not true, according to an area athletic
director.
“It’s not just private schools that have success,” Kettle
Moraine Lutheran Athletic Director Len Collyard said.
On April 20, the WIAA will have its annual meeting and it
recently posted its meeting agenda. On the agenda is a proposed success factor
to help determine postseason tournament placement in soccer, volleyball,
basketball, softball and baseball, among other amendment proposals. But the one
on tournament placement will be the heart of the meeting.
It’s the backbone of a debate that’s gone on for more than a
decade.
Ever since the defunct-WISAA joined the WIAA in 2000, there
has been debate of whether nonpublic schools have an unfair advantage when it
comes to attracting students to their schools.
The debate has picked up steam in the last several years
with the dominance of Whitefish Bay Dominican’s boys basketball team, which won
their fifth straight state title Saturday — a record.
Collyard believes it is unfair for a large population to
criticize and make assumptions about schools only based on the success of a
select few.
Collyard, an athletic director at KML for 40 years, was a
member of the WISAA’s Board of Control when the decision was made for the WISAA
and the WIAA to combine.
So why did it happen?
“Some people wanted to say it was economics,” Collyard said.
“Financially, the WISAA was in a strong position. It wasn’t a financial issue.”
There were several factors that led to the WISAA’s folding.
One of which was competitiveness.
Collyard pointed to Milwaukee Marquette and Milwaukee Pius
as examples at that time.
“There were several key schools that felt like they couldn’t
win because people expected them to win because they were the biggest school,”
Collyard said. “They didn’t have anything to shoot for.”
When WISAA joined the WIAA, WISAA had 53 schools and the
enrollment figures drastically varied from as few as 100 students to more than
1,000. In addition, in most cases, WISAA sports were a single division, which
meant schools of about 100 students had to compete against much larger schools
.
On the other side, Marquette and Pius, for example, competed
against schools that were a third of their sizes.
Collyard said the WISAA reached a point where it couldn’t
field a viable tournament where all programs believed they had a chance to
compete, let alone have it not be one-sided. So the idea to join the WIAA was
proposed.
In the fall of 2000, the multi-year transition was complete.
“The feeling was at that time, if we wanted to make the
switch was to make it on a strength and not a weakness,” Collyard said.
“Finances were not an issue.
“It wasn’t like they were on their last leg financially.”
When WISAA folded, remaining finances were split among those
members.
At the time of the combination, the WIAA membership was in
favor of it.
“The vote wasn’t all that close,” Collyard said, adding it
was about a two-thirds majority.
Collyard acknowledged there was also debate about which
program was the true state champion in a respective sport. Was it Milwaukee Vincent
or Pius in basketball?
“There were certain segments (of WISAA) that had a strong
feeling that the tournament options for them were limited,” Collyard said.
The debate on trying to put programs on a level playing
field reached new heights in 2014 when members of the Six Rivers Conference
introduced an enrollment multiplier for nonpublic schools to determine
postseason divisional placement. The number was 1.65, meaning KML’s, Living
Word Lutheran’s and other nonpublic WIAA member schools’ enrollment would be
multiplied by 1.65 to determine which division they should compete in for a
state tournament series.
Since then, an Ad Hoc committee was assembled and it came up
with a success factor, which would put schools on a points system. If a school
accumulated ‘X’ points in a three-year span, it’d move up a division.
At last spring’s meeting, a two-hour debate saw several
amendments to a proposal for the enrollment multiplier, rather than the success
factor. After a vote, status quo remained.
“The group did a lot of work,” West Bend East Athletic
Director Shane Hansen said. “I know they did a lot of research and homework.
It’s worth thinking about and talking about.”
Hansen said 1.65 was an arbitrary number.
“It wasn’t something I felt comfortable with,” Hansen said.
At last year’s meeting, Collyard was one of several
nonpublic school members to express distaste for any kind of multiplier.
“You’re constantly labeled that you have these perceived
advantages and it’s not true in all cases,” Collyard said.
He cited St. Lawrence Seminary as an example — a rural
all-boys school. St. Lawrence has an enrollment of 398 in a town of 762
residents in Fond du Lac County. Already with WIAA rule, single-sex schools
count double toward tournament placement.
“When you try to make everything equitable, it’s not
possible,” Collyard said. “There’s all kinds of factors. How can you make it
fair for everybody? You can’t. It’s not something that can be solved by one
type of program.
“It’s not going to solve everybody’s problem.”
But then there are programs such as Dominican boys
basketball or Catholic Memorial girls volleyball, for example, that create a
perceived idea of unfair balance. That’s not right, Collyard said.
“I think it’s something that happens all across the
country,” he said. “In some cases, you have some private schools that have a
reputation of bringing in athletes to their school. As a result, they’re
successful year after year.”
Collyard believes if Dominican was a rural school, the
perception would be different. He said Dominican probably wouldn’t get as many
headlines if it was a rural school. The rural vs. urban issue has also been at
the heart of this controversy.
Even if it’s voted down April 20, Hansen said don’t expect
the debate to stop.
“I don’t know what the best outcome is because I haven’t
seen a perfect solution,” he said.
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