Next year in 2019, West High’s sports
and activity teams will be moved
into a new region, region 3, and this
region will stay the same until 2021.
This region consists of schools such
as Copper Hills, Herriman, Riverton,
Bingham, and cross city rivals East.
Everytime there is a region change, it
always brings a lot of concerns, and
thoughts, and this region change is no
different.
Some concerns in regard to
the region change is having an even
playing field, but also player safety.
In a sport like football, player safety
is always an issue based on the physical demand that the sport requires.
Bingham and East have been high
school football giants in the state of
Utah, although West has had recent
success in sports such as volleyball,
and softball, the football team hasn’t
Utah State High School Region Change for 2019
By Ashton Burningham
been quite up to par in the past few
years. With schools such as East
and Bingham being so dominant in
football, you’d have to think that
the safety of our players will be
a serious concern going into next
year’s football season.
Over the past year, there
were a total of 13 D1 recruits coming out of East, Bingham and Riverton. These kids have the ability
to hit hard, run fast, and possibly
unintentionally injure other players.
Besides the size of the
players, the size of the football
program itself will also be affected.
In an interview with the West High
athletic director Rachel Townsend,
she said “If you take the region
they have us in right now, those
schools have about 100 to 120
student athletes going out for
football. We have about an average
of 60, and our numbers are getting
lower because of 8th graders who
are not wanting to come here. We
have people who might not make
the grades or just so many reasons.
So we are averaging from 40 to
60; the size difference is going to
be huge.” Townsend is very concerned about the new placement,
having told us about the process
the school went through after
finding out about the news. “We
advocated to stay in 5A and we felt
like we brought a strong case.” She
said. “We went to the board, Ford
fought for West and they didn’t
hear us out, and so that was disappointing. Then we almost got to a
place where we were like alright,
they are going to leave us in region
2, we can deal with that because
maybe we can win some games
maybe get 2nd or 3rd, get into the
playoffs, possibly even win that region. Then they blindsided us and
put us in region 3 and that is why
we are appealing it.” The appeal
however failed.
Principle Ford White feels the
same way about the situation. He
feels that our free and reduced
lunch numbers are not very accurate, which is important because
a school can stay in 5A if 55% of
their student body qualifies for
free and reduced. West is about at
51% right now, so just short of the
needed number. Ford invited board
members of the Utah High School
Athletics Association to come
and visit West High to get a more
accurate understanding of why the
numbers aren’t very accurate. As
of now there is a second appeal
going on, and our principal, along
with the rest of the administration, is going all in. In this appeal,
White brought up the how different the rosters are between West
and our would be competition,
along with how West has to travel
through the region 2 in order to
get to region 3 games. Ford also
brought up the point of how many
of our student athletes do not have
health insurance. This is a major
problem, because as we mentioned
before, these athletes from other
schools, in particular from East,
Bingham, and Riverton, are typically bigger and stronger than
most, having the potential to unintentionally injure other players. For
West students without health insurance, an injury could be potentially
devastating financially on both
them and their families. Part of this
problem lies at the feet of the Salt
Lake City School District, who is
one of the only districts in the state
who does not require some form of
health insurance for their student
athletes.
We interviewed the UHSAA Executive Director Rob Cuff,
asking about why West ended up in
this region and about his thoughts
on the safety of our players. When
asked about how West ended up in
region 3, he said “I get it is very
difficult if you’re going to organize
regions based on geography and
keeping schools together to always
look at sport by sport competitiveness, and there are some regions
that are a little bit more stronger
than others, but it depends upon
the sport. West High School has
done a phenomenal job in the
sports of softball and volleyball.
So unless if we were to separate
out every sport, sport by sport, and
our board has thought about doing
that for the future, but for this
alignment, if you look at the format procedures, there wasn’t a way
to do that. So basically the school
went as a whole rather than dividing it up by sport. There are going
to be strong teams, and there are
going to be other teams stronger
in other sports. The region schedule is only half, and in some cases
less than half of the games that
you play you can build a schedule
around the region schedule, called
the non region schedule, where
you can play anybody you want.”
When asked about player safety
and a potential rise in injuries, he
said, “It is very difficult to have
subjective factors, because how
would you measure the injuries
when you might get injured playing a team that is not very good
and you can get injured playing a
team that is very good?” However,
our administration here at West is
trying to prevent potential injuries
rather than measure them. We also
learned in this interview that only
the current junior and senior class
enrollment are considered when realigning the regions, which seems
strange considering that the only
one of those classes will actually
be playing in the region.
In another interview with
Bingham Highs football coach,
John Lambourne, he had this to
say, “I have been involved with
High School sports for more than
three decades. Region realignments have always come with
multiple concerns. Classifications
have typically been determined by
enrollment numbers rather than recent competitiveness. Regions are
broken down within those classifications. My preference would be
that every Friday night we would
see all games be very competitive.
I just don’t know that there is any
one practical method to assure
that this occur. In athletics there
is always a “chasing” of sorts and
this is not always a bad thing. You
work hard and strive to compete
against those ahead of you. I have
been on all sides of the issue (winless seasons, middle of the pack
seasons, and undefeated seasons).
Rewards do not only come with
the undefeated seasons!!!! I do
understand issues of player safety
and level playing fields. Disparity
that is too large is not a good thing
for anyone involved. I believe that
disparity in football is especially
difficult because of the physical
nature of the sport.”
He also had this to say regarding player safety, “Player safety is an issue. Age, size, numbers
of bigger, faster, stronger athletes
on the field at one time, etc..”.
In sports obviously nothing is handed to you. You have to
work hard and constantly improve
as a player, which is the “chasing”
that coach Lambourne stated in the
interview.
The administration is meeting with the USHAA board members one last time to make a case
for West this week. If you would
like to voice your opinion about
the subject, please click on the link
in Ford White’s Instagram bio and
fill out a quick survey.