By James Biggam, Times Argus staff writer
The Vermont Principals’ Association released its updated divisional alignments for varsity action, with the “core” sports of soccer, basketball, baseball, and softball determined by student enrollment. The VPA attempted to strike a balance with four 14-team divisions for each of those sports, though it’s rarely possible to produce a final product with perfect symmetry that leaves everyone satisfied.
Divisional hierarchy in the non-core sports isn’t decided strictly by enrollment, so D-I programs that have struggled historically may drop down to D-II or D-III. Two examples in the latest roll-out of alignments are Rutland and Brattleboro, which are both moving to D-II for boys’ and girls’ lacrosse.
And the battle for top honors in D-II boys’ lacrosse will be extra fierce with potentially more than 16 squads filling the postseason bracket. The D-III tournament has never had more than eight teams and all of those squads will now be placed in D-II – a switch that was supported by the state’s lacrosse committee.
Former D-III teams affected include Otter Valley, Stratton, Randolph, Montpelier, Mt. Abraham, BFA-Fairfax, and the defending champion Green Mountain Valley School. Montpelier has relied heavily on U-32 athletes since the Raiders played their last season in 2021, and the cooperative program with Solons and Raiders won three straight D-III crowns before suffering a 14-13 loss to GMVS in the title game last June.
The student enrollment in Vermont has decreased from roughly 120,000 in 1997 to 81,000 last year, so it’s no surprise that overall participation in sports is down and certain divisions have been eliminated. Division II gymnastics ended in 1999, D-IV football came to a halt in 2006 and the last year of Division II boys’ tennis was 2009. Division III boys’ golf ended in 2018 and this past spring marked the first time since 2012 that there was no D-IV track and field championship.
Here are some questions about the realignments for VPA assistant executive director Dr. Lauren Young:
TA: In terms of the process, how intense is it to finalize the realignments? And how tough is it when you’re making the cutoff between divisions and it’s boiling down to a few students here and there?
Young: “With the way that we’re doing it with the population base, it made it a lot easier than years past because we took past practice out of it. We went with numbers, and then we gave people the opportunity to move and bump up and then let things settle. And we would talk at the end of the season. So, at the end of fall, we would do the fall alignments and allow that to marinate with the athletic directors. And if they wanted to bump up, that’s when they would tell me. Each season it probably took a couple weeks after the end of the season for it to become final – because then when you bump one team up, and then that bumps one team down, they have the option (to petition up). So, I had to verify a lot of things with people.”
TA: So, it seems like a lot of moving parts and fluidity. It’s not like you’re sending one email and saying, ‘This is how it’s going to be,’ right?
Young: “No. I would send the drafts off to the committee for them to take a second look at it. And then I would send it off to athletic directors for them to take a third look at it. And then it would be become final.”
TA: How much pushback do you encounter when the final version is announced and what are some of the big misconceptions that people have about the whole process?
Young: “For North Country specifically, it’s hard for them because they are geographically dispersed from Division I schools. So, it does put a lot of pressure on them to travel. But we’re looking at D-I as the tournament, and they can play a regular-season schedule that fits. It does affect the index points if they’re playing D-II schools that are local, but they are allowed to decide what their regular season look like.”
TA: With some schools having decreasing enrollment and now with a lot more cooperative programs, are you expecting to see more of these merged teams in the next decade?
Young: “I would say that Act 454 is probably going to really throw a big wrench into how we do things. And we need to wait and see what happens with some of the stuff coming as a result of 454 in the next few years to see what those division alignments are going to look like, because I’m not sure how many high schools were going to have.”
TA: Do you look at cooperative teams like Paine Mountain and Caledonia United as success stories that are setting the tone for other areas?
Young: “I think they’re great success stories because they aren’t questioning if they’re going to have a team. Because they know they’re going to have numbers – they just don’t know how many. And so they already have that established. And what’s great for that is it doesn’t disrupt their schedule and they’re not leaving other teams in a position where they’re losing two games because they can’t field a team. So, there’s more predictability because these folks are going to have teams. And if I had a crystal ball, do I think that’s maybe what some things might be looking like with Act 454? Potentially.”
(This article was excerpted with permission.)
