ASAA reclassifies conferences, divisions

The Alaska School Activities Association made a move past confusion and toward clarity last week.

The board opted to dump the old region classifications for the state's athletic conferences, in favor of a much clearer system of recognizing the conferences. The old conference names, which Wasilla activities director Doug Bean likens to playing an alphabet game -- will be replaced with single-named conferences. For instance Houston will no longer compete in the 3A Region III-District III basketball tournament, but the 3A Southcentral Conference, and the Southcentral basketball tournament.

Bean said the board has been discussing the change for about a year.

"It simplifies stuff," Bean said. "I don't know why we didn't think about this years ago."

Despite the change, each school will not compete in the same conference in every sport. Palmer, Wasilla and Colony will compete in the Northern Railbelt Conference in football; in the North Star Conference in hockey; in the South Central Conference in baseball and softball and in the Northern Lights Conference in the remaining sports. Bean said the board discussed a more uniform system for the name changes, but many of the conferences -- such as the North Star and Northern Lights -- were preserved for sake of tradition.

The changes will go in effect for the 2004-05 seasons.