Oregon’s quest for a better way to organize high school athletics continues.

On Friday, the Oregon School Activities Association (OSAA) released three new proposals for realigning the state’s high school athletic leagues. And the changes for Central Oregon schools could be dramatic.

After the OSAA’s first proposal for reclassification starting with the 2010-11 school year, which came out in November, was widely panned — Bend High and Redmond were placed in the Southwest Conference with the two Medford high schools — the state’s governing body for high school athletics last week presented three alternative plans after it heard public testimony on the issue last Monday.

“I have a hard time seeing them going away from the (current) six-class system,” says Bend High athletic director Greg Hammond. “They’ve only tried it for four years.” (The OSAA went from a four-classification to the new six-class system before the start of the 2006-07 school year.)

Proposal No. 2, as the OSAA calls it, retains the current six-classification plan, but it adjusts the cutoff points between classifications. While all six classes would see adjustments to their enrollment cutoff numbers, the changes would have the most impact at Class 6A.

Currently, 6A is made up of schools with more than 1,521 students and schools of lower enrollment that chose to “play up” at the state’s highest competitive level.

In Proposal No. 2, the cutoff mark between 5A and 6A would be moved down to 1,400 students, meaning current 5A schools Bend High, Crater in Central Point, and Hillsboro would all move up to 6A. The need for possibly adjusting the cutoff mark between 5A and 6A arose when Benson, Franklin, Lincoln, Hood River Valley, Sandy, Milwaukie and Putnam, high schools that chose to play up during the current four-year time block, all notified the OSAA they would not be doing so again.

The OSAA’s Proposal No. 3 also retains the six-class system, but it includes four leagues that would be composed of schools from multiple classifications. A Central Oregon “hybrid” league in this proposal would be made up of Redmond (currently 6A), Bend (5A), Mountain View (5A), Summit (5A), Crook County (5A), Madras (5A), Sisters (4A) and La Pine (4A) high schools. Similarly, an Eastern Oregon hybrid league would include Pendleton, Hermiston, Ontario, La Grande, Baker and McLoughlin of Milton-Freewater.

The other two hybrid leagues would be a mixed-classification Midwestern League that would include Eugene’s 6A and 5A schools, and a Southern Oregon Conference that would be made up of schools from Medford, Roseburg, Grants Pass, Ashland, Central Point and Eagle Point.

“The hybrid leagues would be great for travel and for parents seeing games,” says Crook County A.D. Scott Polen, “but having one team beat a team so bad it’s humiliating isn’t a good thing.”

Which schools advance to the state playoffs would be a decision up to the leagues, but how many postseason berths each hybrid league received would be up to the OSAA’s state championship committee.

While Proposal No. 3 has Central Oregon’s eight largest schools playing together in one league, a third alternative released on Friday, Proposal No. 4, has those same eight schools competing in four different leagues.

Based in part on a plan submitted by the Medford School District in November, Proposal No. 4 breaks the OSAA’s almost 300 member schools into five classifications instead of six. In the five-class proposal, 5A would be composed of 52 schools with enrollments of 1,350 students or more. Class 4A would be made up of 55 schools of between 600 and 1,349 students, and 3A would be home to 53 high schools with enrollment numbers between 240 and 599. Class 2A and 1A would remain largely unchanged from how they are organized today.

In the five-class proposal, the Central Oregon-based Intermountain Conference would cease to exist. Bend, Redmond and Mountain View of Bend would play in the largest classification in the Salem-based Central Valley Conference, and Summit of Bend would be a part of a new 4A Midwestern League that would include Eugene-area schools Churchill, Marist, North Eugene and Cottage Grove, in addition to Lebanon, Marshfield of Coos Bay and Sweet Home.

Crook County and Madras would also be 4A schools in the five-class plan, and both would compete in a nine-school league that would include Portland-area teams Estacada, Gladstone and La Salle of Milwaukie, in addition to Hood River Valley, Molalla, Sandy and The Dalles-Wahtonka.

Sisters and La Pine would both be placed in 3A in the five-class proposal, and would compete in a league with Willamette Valley schools Creswell, Harrisburg, Jefferson (near Albany), Pleasant Hill, and Santiam Christian in Corvallis.

While last week’s new proposals all focused primarily on reducing excess travel and the burdens that come with it, the OSAA also hopes to tackle other goals in its next reclassification. At the same time the OSAA released its latest redistricting proposals, it also stated its classification and districting committee would still look into ways to make sure public schools stayed competitive with private schools, and the possibility of adjusting enrollment numbers (and therefore classification placement) based on socio-economic factors.

The OSAA’s classification and districting committee meets again on Feb. 23 in Wilsonville. The committee will get together three more times after its February meeting and will make a final recommendation to the OSAA’s executive board in October.

If you have a suggestion or proposal of your own, e-mail OSAA assistant executive director Peter Weber at peterw@osaa.org. All material received by the OSAA pertaining to reclassification will be shared with the members of the classification and districting committee. Proposals from the general public will be posted online.

CHECK IT OUT

— Go to www.osaa.org to see all three of the OSAA’s most recent proposals. The OSAA has also posted proposals from the general public on its website.

Go to www.osaa.org to see all three of the OSAA’s most recent proposals. The OSAA has also posted proposals from the general public on its Web site.