The Alaska School Activities Association has given the Juneau School District until Nov. 1 to submit a written proposal regarding a cooperative, or merged, Thunder Mountain and Juneau-Douglas football team.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe conversation is happening, we\u2019re very close to a decision one way or another,\u201d Thunder Mountain High School Athletic Director Jake Jacoby said. \u201cI would say in the next week a final decision will be made.\u201d<\/p>\n
Football is one of the sports that has generated the most discussion on whether to merge. Finding it difficult to consistently maintain a healthy checkbook and roster, the Juneau programs could find immediate benefits to merging into one team.<\/p>\n
Thunder Mountain High School opened in 2008 and established its football program the following year. Several years later, Juneau-Douglas High School moved from a 4A, or Division I school, to a 3A, or Division II school.<\/p>\n
Getting ASAA\u2019s attention (if needed)<\/strong><\/p>\n All proposals brought to the ASAA Board of Directors must first pass through the board of the affected region \u2014 in this case, Region V.<\/p>\n Jacoby broached the topic of consolidating their two football teams at a September meeting with the Region V Board Members.<\/p>\n \u201cWe discussed the potential, the possibility,\u201d Jacoby said. \u201cEveryone seems to understand where we\u2019re coming from \u2014 where we\u2019re coming from financially, also just competitively and the safety concerns of so many freshmen playing, especially on JD\u2019s team that\u2019s been so low on numbers lately. There wasn\u2019t any negativity that came out of that meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n Should the two teams become one, Ketchikan would, as Jacoby puts it, be left on \u201can island as a medium school football team.\u201d<\/p>\n North Pole \u2014 one of four Southeast Conference members \u2014 has already elected to join a large schools conference next season. A potential cooperative team between JDHS and TMHS would give them a large enough student body to count them as a large school or Division I team.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ASAA Associate Director Sandi Wagner said it usually takes at least two meetings for proposals to be dealt with.<\/p>\n While Juneau teams are especially susceptible to cuts to school district funding due to high travel costs in and out of the region, Wagner noted Juneau\u2019s predicament is part of a statewide trend.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is just, unfortunately, the state of Alaska,\u201d Wagner said. \u201cThere have been co-ops all over the place for a very long time because they didn\u2019t have enough kids. The co-ops that are coming out now are completely dealing with cost. It\u2019s a cost issue. They can\u2019t afford it.\u201d<\/p>\n JSD did not provide activities funding outside of administrative costs this fiscal year. JSD Director David Means said the same will be true this year.<\/p>\n That has placed extra pressure on local businesses to help recover some of those fees.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of expenses besides the travel,\u201d JDHS football head coach Kevin Hamrick said. \u201cAnd the community has been so awesome to support all these (expenses) but I just don\u2019t know how much longer they can keep it up because they\u2019re starting to cut back.\u201d<\/p>\n Hamrick said there was about a 25 percent drop in business sponsorships from this season to last.<\/p>\n Putting kids on the field<\/p>\n TMHS head football coach Randy Quinto declined to comment on his team\u2019s finances but wholeheartedly agreed with Hamrick on a separate issue: the futility of playing freshman on varsity.<\/p>\n And while Quinto\u2019s roster was certainly deeper this season than Hamrick\u2019s, he still didn\u2019t have enough to support a junior varsity.<\/p>\n \u201cIt really doesn\u2019t help the football program here in Juneau at all to not have a feeder program, to have a JV that\u2019s going to move up to your varsity,\u201d Quinto said. \u201cOtherwise, every year, we\u2019re plugging guys in who have never played in those positions and that\u2019s tough without any game experience.<\/p>\n \u201cSo moving to a co-op, hopefully having a JV, and being able to financially sustain a JV, those younger kids will get the (game) time and then the program can build from there.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the last five years, Hamrick has watched his team go from being one touchdown away from winning a state championship (2013) to a team whose only medium schools wins came against the winless Ketchikan Kings (this year).<\/p>\n \u201cHaving freshmen out there on your varsity is just not common, you\u2019re at a disadvantage,\u201d Hamrick said. \u201cEven though some of them have good size, their muscles aren\u2019t as developed, etc. etc. So that\u2019s my number one reason to support it.\u201d<\/p>\n The district held an open forum in the spring to gauge the public\u2019s opinion on the prospect of consolidating high school football and softball at the two schools.<\/p>\n No decisions were made one way or the other at the meeting. Polls did show that the community is still fairly split on the matter.<\/p>\n Hamrick hopes those wishing to maintain both teams at all costs can see the flipside of the equation \u2014 and the difficult decision facing the school administration.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ll just think we\u2019re losing a team but in fact, we\u2019re gaining a safer event for our kids to participate in with better equipment, better competition,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the ASAA handbook does not specifically provide a route for schools with over 500 students to apply for cooperative status. Article 7, Section 11.D of the ASAA Bylaws states, “The Board of Directors may also approve cooperative school programs for member schools who do not otherwise qualify…” The article has been updated to reflect the change. <\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2022 Contact sports reporter Nolin Ainsworth at 523-2272 or nolin.ainsworth@juneauempire.com.<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Alaska School Activities Association has given the Juneau School District until Nov. 1 to submit a written proposal regarding a cooperative, or merged, Thunder Mountain and Juneau-Douglas football team. \u201cThe conversation is happening, we\u2019re very close to a decision one way or another,\u201d Thunder Mountain High School Athletic Director Jake Jacoby said. \u201cI would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":17152,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-17151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17151"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=17151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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