Kansas high school golf coach pushes for change in the way KSHSAA assigns regionals
Another spring has produced another round of controversy with how geography plays a central role in state qualifying under the Kansas State High School Activities Association.
This time it’s boys golf coaches in the Wichita area who are motivated to enact change after the five top teams in Class 5A by scoring average were sorted into the same regional hosted by Bishop Carroll last week.
Kapaun Mt. Carmel, Goddard Eisenhower and Maize South advanced to the state tournament, which begins in Winfield on Tuesday, while Bishop Carroll, the City League champions which entered with the second-best team scoring average in Class 5A, and Andover, which entered with the fifth-best team scoring average, were shut out of the 12 state-qualifying teams with scores that would have easily qualified in other regionals.
“This is far from the first time this has happened, but it is maybe the worst with how many good teams were left out,” Carroll coach Mark Berger said. “All five of us should be going to state, but that’s not the way it’s set up right now. We’ve been trying to work on this for years in terms of trying to get seeded regionals. We’ve just got to get enough golf coaches on board and then get KSHSAA to support it because the logic they have for deciding regionals doesn’t seem very logical at all.”
After years of pushing for change, Berger feels like what happened this season in certain regionals could be enough to garner enough support for change to happen.
Here’s a look at the proposal some coaches are pushing to change the way regionals are sorted and the steps that must be followed for change to happen.
The source of frustration for Kansas high school golf coaches
Frustration around certain sections of the Kansas high school golf community might be at an all-time high after last week’s regionals.
In Class 6A, Olathe East shot a team score of 305 but was left out of the state field, while a team score of 338 in another regional qualified.
In Class 5A, two regionals were hosted less than five miles apart at Rolling Hills and Reflection Ridge in Wichita with a significant difference in team scores: 324 strokes was the cut-off to go to state at Rolling Hills, while 354 strokes proved to be the target score at Reflection Ridge.
“KSHSAA has a format in place where they assign the regionals geographically and not by scoring average,” Andover coach Ryan Harshaw said. “It’s unfortunate we had a lot of good teams in the same regional. It’s happened before and I’m sure it’s probably going to happen again.”
Under the regional assignment criteria in the KSHSAA golf manual, it states that a host site will be determined and then schools will be assigned “in clusters geographically around the host site.”
Berger points out KSHSAA never reveals how it determines these clusters, leaving coaches to wonder how Maize and Maize South, located less than three miles apart, are sorted into different regionals.
KSHSAA assistant executive director Jeremy Holaday, who oversees golf, said he has received more than a few emails inquiring about the process this season when the regional assignments were released.
“When those regionals get set up, we’re not here in the office going, ‘Let’s go ahead and put all of these good teams together,’” Holaday said. “Those are done well before we even know what teams are going to look like. The way we do it, we base it on geography.”
And therein lies the fundamental issue dividing the coaches and KSHSAA: some coaches want the 12 best teams, regardless of geography, to play in the state tournament, while KSHSAA wants the best teams from different regions of the state, not necessarily the best teams overall, to play in the state tournament.
“The ultimate goal, at least in my opinion, is you want your state tournament, whether it’s baseball, basketball, volleyball, golf, to have the best teams there,” Harshaw said. “You want to give the better teams in the state a better chance to play at the state tournament and the format we have in place right now is not conducive to that at this point.”
The proposal to change the Kansas high school golf postseason
The proposal being spearheaded by Bishop Carroll coach Mark Berger calls for KSHSAA to scrap regionals based strictly on geography and to introduce a ranking system designed to split the top teams into separate regionals.
Each team would be required to submit team scores to kansasgolfscores.com, a website that already has a nearly complete database, much like football, basketball, soccer, baseball and softball teams are required to submit scores to the official KSHSAA website.
From there, Berger suggests a panel from the Kansas Golf Coaches Association could gather two weeks before regionals to act as the seeding committee: determining which teams go where based on the team scoring average submitted throughout the season.
“It’s just like how tennis coaches do their seeding before tournaments,” Berger said. “The objective is to just make sure the top eight or so teams are split up in different regionals. You don’t want three of the best teams in one regional if you can really avoid it.”
There’s no way to account for teams in different parts of the state playing different courses, but Berger believes team scoring average is as good of a data point as the win-loss record of a basketball team that KSHSAA uses to seed regionals.
“They seed all the other sports by win-loss records, even though you could have a school that plays a lot of 4A and 3A teams and they go 18-2 and then another that’s 15-5 but they play mostly 5A and 6A schools,” Berger said. “That team is probably better than the other, but they don’t get the higher seed and (KSHSAA) doesn’t have any problems seeding it by record that way. It’s not perfect in that regard and the scoring average works the same way. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty darn good and it’s objective data.
Berger’s plan is a natural fit for how Class 6A and 5A are constructed with two regionals for south central and west teams and two regionals for mostly northeast teams. Separating the top teams and mixing them into separate regions would be an easy fix for those classifications.
Where the plan becomes complicated is how it would work for the smaller classifications, where the regional sites are spread out more across the state. Added travel for schools remains a hurdle for the proposal in gaining mass support.
“The bigger issues do seem to be in the larger classifications and it doesn’t seem like a very hard fix on those levels,” Berger said. “But then you look at the 4A regionals (Buhler, Winfield, Fort Scott, Wamego) and those are in four completely different parts of the state. If you move teams around in those smaller classifications, then you’re adding maybe a couple hours of drive time, which a lot of schools don’t want right now. It’s not as easy of a fix on those levels.”
When Burger has tried to push for change in the past, he has failed to gain the support required — he believes because the smaller schools don’t feel the need to make wholesale changes to qualifying to fix the problems for the larger schools.
Holaday sees a similar problem.
“I think it’s fair to say not all of the coaches are on board with all of it,” Holaday said. “There still needs to be a grander discussion before we can accept a proposal that makes sense not just for 5A, but we’ve got to try to make it make sense for all of our golf classifications.”
Berger has some pushback there, however. He points out that KSHSAA already has different regional seeding systems in different classifications for sports like basketball, baseball and softball, where Class 6A, 5A and 4A are split into two regions and seeded from there by win-loss records, much like the model Berger wants golf to adopt, while Class 3A, 2A and 1A have maintained the traditional regional model sorted by geography.
“They say they don’t want to do something for the larger classifications that they wouldn’t do for the smaller classifications, but they already do that in other sports,” Berger said. “I don’t think that should matter. They just have to be willing to see this as an improvement. It really could be an easy fix, especially if you’re just looking at the larger classifications.”
What has to happen to change the KSHSAA postseason
This isn’t the first time Berger has tried to make a push for change, but his proposal has failed to gain enough traction.
So what exactly is the process to enact changes to the postseason in Kansas high school sports?
It starts with gaining enough support in the Kansas Golf Coaches Association, where at least 80% of coaches who take the survey must agree with the proposal moving forward.
If the proposal reaches the threshold, then it would be considered by the KSHSAA Executive Board and discussed at regional conferences across the state by school administrators in the fall. Another vote would take place, requiring a majority vote, for it to reach the final step of being adopted by the Executive Board.
Another avenue is for the Kansas Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association to submit the proposal, where it would require at least a 70% approval rate from the athletic directors across the state for it to be considered by the KSHSAA Executive Board.
Previous proposals have not made it very far down the road to change.
“I think there’s a little bit of a disconnect between what the coaches want and what administrators want,” Holaday said. “Sometimes those things don’t always intertwine and I think both sides have really valid reasons for why they like something or why they don’t like something. There’s always two sides to change at the school level: how coaches see things and how administrators have to see things. That’s the tricky part of trying to make both of those things match up.”
Berger is hopeful this year could be different, but understands it’s an uphill battle.
“We still need to get the golf coaches and AD’s behind this,” Berger said. “I hate to say it, but there are some schools who look at this situation and don’t see any problem with it because in the current format they have a better shot at making it to state. It doesn’t matter that they’re not one of the top 12 teams in the state. Everyone kind of looks out for their own self-interest. But I know there’s a lot of coaches who aren’t that way and they do understand there’s a problem and there’s an easy fix. So I’m hopeful because I definitely would like to see change.”
This story was originally published May 23, 2022 at 7:18 AM.
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