The landscape of high school sports in Edmonton and area will be on the same level playing field next season.
The Metro Edmonton High School Athletic Association announced Wednesday that starting in September, the 21 schools in the Edmonton Public Schools Athletic Association will join the metro association for the 2013/14 athletic calendar.
A disagreement between the two associations over allowing 19-year-old athletes to play high school sports led to the formation of the metro league in 1988.
The Alberta Schools’ Athletic Association later adapted a policy restricting high school athletes to three years but the split between the associations remained.
The associations have only met in exhibitions, tournaments, zones for provincial berths and provincial championships but not in league play.
“In the end it’s good for kids,” said Norma Smith, the metro athletic coordinator. “A lot of kids didn’t understand the concept of two leagues in Edmonton and now you can have a true greater Edmonton and area champion.”
The metro association will now consist of 48 schools from 13 public and Catholic school districts. St. Albert representation includes the Bellerose Bulldogs, Paul Kane Blues, St. Albert Skyhawks and for the first time the Ecole Alexander-Taché Scorpions, with around 70 high school students in the fold.
Based on enrolment, schools are classified for provincial competition as 1A, 2A, 3A or 4A (largest) and can vary by sport.
This season the metro league consisted of 14 sports: badminton, basketball, cheerleading, cross-country, curling, football, golf, handball, rugby, soccer, swimming, track and field, volleyball and wrestling. Some of the team sports are broken down into conferences in the senior and junior categories.
Paul Kane athletic director Marc Meunier is excited to see the two associations back together.
“It’s a breath of fresh air for athletics. The bottom line is it will benefit the athletes and the kids 100 per cent,” Meunier said. “It’s going to create a very nice league and divisions. Now the smaller schools can play against the smaller schools. Some of the weaker programs can play against weaker programs and the powerhouses will still be able to go head to head so that will be exciting.”
At St. Albert Catholic High School, a perennial 3A contender at the provincial level, athletic director Evan Holstein gave the alliance two thumbs up.
“It’s a great move. It’s going to be excellent for the league. It will be great to kind of balance out competition throughout the different conferences now,” said Holstein, who also coaches the Skyhawks men’s basketball team. “Speaking from the 3A point of view it will be great for Edmonton Christian (from the public league) and us. We never get to see each other in league so from my team’s standpoint it will be good.
“It will really be good for our girls’ team as well (39-1 this season as the two-time defending undefeated metro premier basketball champions and four-time reigning 3A provincial gold medallists). It will allow them the opportunity to play against some of the other bigger public schools in a league scenario like the (Harry) Ainlays, the Sheps (Ross Sheppard) and JPs (Jasper Place).”
Smith said a transition team is in place to prepare for the upcoming season.
“They’re going to start looking at things next week because this is all happening very fast,” she said. “There will be a lot of trial and error the first year but we’ll get through it. Everybody is very positive on both sides, metro and public. We’ll make this work, no question.”
Volleyball and football are at the top of the priority list to ensure they are ready to go in the fall.
Volleyball is arguably the largest sport in terms of school participation. Football is the marquee high school sport in Edmonton and area, even though the public league had only four teams in its highest tier of competition, compared to nine in the metro Carr conference.
“Because they joined metro, the metro stuff stands. We’ll still have Carr and Miles (conferences) but if there is a group of teams that want to do a third division, no problem,” Smith said.
The addition of a third conference in a number of sports would help accommodate the influx of teams and their levels of ability.
“All the partners are important,” Smith said. “Some just can’t compete at the middle levels because they’re small schools.”
Schools will now have tougher decisions to make when it comes to deciding on which conferences to put their teams in.
“We’re really going to have to be careful of where we want to play. The schools, coaches and athletic directors are really going to have to look at their athletes and see what kind of team they have coming up. Do we have a young team? Do we have a competitive team? You really have to see where you fit in because that is going to be important,” Meunier said. “You can look at the school size and school population but sometimes that is not necessarily a tell-tale sign of it. For the most part I think it is but sometimes you have smaller schools with a real powerhouse team and that’s something we have to have our thumb on the pulse of our teams and the players and even the young players coming in from junior high too.”
Bellerose athletic director Sue Leighton didn’t respond to an interview request prior to Friday’s press deadline.
