Siloam Springs football proposal fails

Matt Jones
October 20, 2011

FAYETTEVILLE — A proposal for Class 7A and 6A teams to play in separate conferences for football only failed Thursday.

The measure, presented by Siloam Springs High School, did not receive the two-thirds majority vote among the state's 33 largest high schools needed to pass.

Twenty schools voted in favor of the measure.

The Arkansas Activities Association released tentative conference assignments in June, but Siloam Springs went before the AAA board last month asking to play only teams in Class 6A because of similar enrollment numbers. The board denied the request, but agreed to let the schools vote on the proposal in a special mail ballot.

Siloam Springs, which has participated in Class 5A for the last several years, is slated to move up in classification in 2012, but will have to play in an eight-team conference comprised of it and seven schools from Class 7A.

Siloam Springs has an enrollment of 853 students, while the other seven schools in its proposed league have enrollments of at least 1,290 students.

Bentonville, one of Siloam Springs' future conference foes, is the state's largest high school with an enrollment of 2,591 students.

How to fairly split up the state's largest classifications has long been an argument in Arkansas. The AAA currently has seven classifications for its 295 member schools, with the two largest classes consisting of just 16 schools each.

To cut down on travel, two conferences were formed prior to the 2010 season comprised of schools from both classifications. Because of the enrollment disparities, all 16 Class 6A schools are allowed to participate in the state playoffs.

Three proposals aimed at changing the current format failed at the AAA's annual meeting in the summer, including one that would have merged the 32 largest schools into a single classification.