Feeling their pain

[DCCavalier]

I guess part of the new realignment was to make the four regions in AAA, made up largely of schools in teh major metorpolitan areas of teh state, feel the pain of the small Group A schools in the southwestern and mostly rural parts of the state.

The 5A "North" somehow includes Halifax County, which is on the the North Carolina border, and the 4A "North" has George Washington of Danville, which also borders North Carolina. Why those two schools weren't assigned a "South" conference to play in, who knows.

So tonight as the 5A North Region began on a "school" night, Massaponax got to travel from just south of Fredericksburg, to west of Ashland, about 40 miles, to play Hanover County's Patrick Henry. They won. Now, less than 20 hours later, they get to travel 60 miles north to Arlington to play at Wakefield. 200 miles of bus trips on back to back school nights.

Isn't that just great?

Oh I forgot that C.D. Hylton who got put in 6A "South" got to drive 220 miles...one way...tonight to play at Patrick Henry of Roanoke. Meanwhile, the longest trip for Hylton, had they been put in the 6A "North" with the other 26 6A schools would have been 30 miles to Yorktown High.

The VHSL needs to tweek these alignments before the new school year, but they'll likely wait until the 2015-16 school year.

 

[Phoebus Fan]

OMG 220 miles one way? That's not fair to the kids at all.

 

[numb3rs]

Last year, five of those schools (Halifax County, GW Danville, Massaponax, CD Hylton, and Patrick Henry-Roanoke) were all in the Group AAA Northwest Region. So, there were regularly long trips in that region too. Of course, it's a little odd for two schools near the NC border to be in a "North" region, but they're about the same distance from the bulk of schools in both the "North" and "South" regions. You're not going to get rid of these long trips entirely unless isolated 4A, 5A, and 6A schools were allowed to "play down" at a lower level.

 

[VaPrepsRod]

Originally posted by DCCavalier:

Oh I forgot that C.D. Hylton who got put in 6A "South" got to drive 220 miles...one way...tonight to play at Patrick Henry of Roanoke. Meanwhile, the longest trip for Hylton, had they been put in the 6A "North" with the other 26 6A schools would have been 30 miles to Yorktown High.

C.D. Hylton and Patrick Henry Roanoke have been in the same region for well over a decade now. Realignment had nothing to do with that matchup.

Patrick Henry Roanoke is 200 miles away from everybody in Class 6A.

 

[RVDChamps90]

PH and Franklin Co have had to do that for years....

In the old NW region

 

[DCCavalier]

Its the first year so I'll give it some time to work out kinks but one thing that should be considered if you're not going to allow "play up or play down" is why does there have to be a close to even split of schools in each classification? Is there really a problem if you took the eastern Prince William schools out of the 6A South and put them in the 6A North....with their western Prince William cousins.... and just have 30 schools in one region and 20 in the other.

For years the AAA Northwest Region had only 3 districts while every one else had 4. Whats wrong with 4 Conferences in the 6A North and 3 in the 6A South? There should be a concern with kids having to take long road trips, many times on nights when there is school the next day.

I get it...all those schools south and west of Central Virginia have had to deal with long road trips forever, but again, is that why VHSL has forced the schools in metropolitan DC, Richmond, and Hampton Roads break up their AAA clusters, regardless of size to appease the smaller and more rural schools?

 

[VaPrepsRod]

Richmond to Roanoke is 188 miles, Virginia Beach to Roanoke is 294 miles.

Your proposed solution does nothing to fix the problem of long drives on school nights that you've raised, it just shifts the drive from someone in the North to someone in the South.