NIAA Completes Realignment

By DAVE BELCHER

Moapa Valley Progress

After a month and a half of tussling over realignment, a group of 4A principals took a trip to Reno last week to voice their opposition to the committee’s plan to create a 5A division in Nevada. Behind a shield of competitive advantage, the group of principals carved up the 5A proposal and won seven of the committee’s nine votes to eliminate the 5A division; at least for two more years. The two opposing votes came from northern Nevada.

But things went generally well for the Moapa Valley and the other small schools including Boulder City and Virgin Valley. The 3A was changed now with Desert Pines, Mojave and Chaparral going back to the 4A where they belong – at least in football.

Rancho will move down to the 3A for football, presumably in hopes of doing what these three other schools did over the past few years in rebuilding their programs on the backs of the three small schools.
Still the local administrators were content with how the realignment ended up.
“We got what we wanted,” said MVHS assistant principal Tony Polzien.
He was referring to a ten team southern league in football only, that would match the Northern league, also with ten schools.

The changes in the northern 3A includes North Valley High School being dropped down to the 3A. That is the only change in the north.

For the south, Chaparral, Mojave and a Desert Pines will move up to 4A for football only. Rancho will drop to the 3A. Democracy Prep (Agassi Prep) was moved up from 2A.

In all other sports, Chaparral and Mojave will remain in the 3A. Cheyenne, Rancho, Desert Pines and SECTA will move up into the 4A. Also moving into the southern 3A will be SLAM and Somerset Losse.
Here is the league breakdown in the Southern 3A Region non-football: the first league will have Democracy Prep, Del Sol, Mojave, Pahrump Valley, Somerset Losee and Western. The second league will include Boulder City, Chaparral, Moapa Valley, Somerset Sky Pointe, S.L.A.M., Sunrise Mountain and Virgin Valley.

With the vote to keep the 4A, Bishop Gorman will remain in the 4A. Of course, this is a big concern in the north because 9 out of 11 schools in the 4A north voted to not move to the 5A. Therefore, it would have created a southern 5A only and not a true state championship many pointed out. Gorman football has won the last nine state championships.

The other thing this arrangement shows is a lack of communication between the principals who brought up their proposal and their athletic departments. The principals claimed they knew nothing of the new realignment proposal and that they were not given enough time to give their opinions.

The 5A idea was first published by Nevadapreps.com back on March 30, 2017. The athletic administrators and athletic directors presented their proposal as to the realignment in December, 2017. Were they asleep or did they just not care until their school was affected?
NIAA realignment will happen again in two years.