PIERRE – Even though some nine-man high school football programs are not happy with their upcoming schedules, those schedules will not change.
In its June board meeting Thursday, the South Dakota High School Activities Association Board of Directors decided that there will be no revisions to 2023 football schedules.
Complaints were received by the board before its April meeting from schools not pleased with how many cross-classification matchups there were in some schedules, ie. 9AA vs. 9B. The board determined at that point that the 2022 schedules could not be changed, but did decide to conduct a survey to determine whether 2023 schedules should be re-examined.
Of the 48 nine-man programs that responded to the survey, 25 said that the current schedules should be kept and 23 said that they should not.
The board also addressed the issue of sportsmanship. SDHSAA Executive Director Dan Swartos referred to an incident earlier this week at a Junior Legion game in Yankton, saying, “I saw a thing this week where a baseball umpire got followed out to their vehicle after a contest. There are some boundaries being crossed. I think a lot of it revolves around sportsmanship and how we treat each other. We’ve kind of forgotten how to treat each other with respect.”
Assistant Executive Director Jo Auch said that such lack of sportsmanship and other factors contribute to the ongoing shortage of officials.
