You're only mentioning 2 schools, how do schools like Camp Point Central, Greenfield, Althoff, Athens, Nashville, Mt. Carmel (downstate), Roxana, Tolono, etc. feel about districts? All successful small schools from the south. Do you speak for them too when you say that successful programs hate districting?
Given that Althoff was kicked out of their last conference, they would love to just be part of something. They were 4A when they were booted. They dropped to 1A since.
Athens plays in a multi class conference which propels them to better showings in the playoffs.
As for the rest, why don't you interview those coaches or find a quote from them on their stances? Do the work...
You're supporting a proposal which will diminish quality of play, increase travel time, and destroy opportunities. Frankly, enough people on these threads bemoan how pathetic and subpar the smaller school classes are. And here we have people, such as you, supporting the effort to restrict the smaller schools from improving. Why would any parent decide to move to a community with a program that is capped at how good it can be? I mean seriously....explain why Rochester doesn't just send their JV out to play Macomb, QND, Havana, Stanford Olympia, Taylorville, & Peoria Manual. Furthermore, it deteriorates the coach staff's skillsets as well.
Districting is the epitome accepting mediocrity.
Next, you'll demand other schools "play up". Then let's take a school such as Athens, Rochester, ESL, who already do....successfully. What now? You'll then be complaining about how the successful schools who hate districting messed up the districts by playing up and caused havoc in scheduling.
And something you have not researched, the last proposal had Althoff in 4A. They lost in the 1A playoffs this year. Breese Mater Dei was also 4A. They lost in the 2A playoffs. It had Edwardsville making a 7-hour roundtrip (by car) to play LWE. Lockport would have to do the same to play Edwardsville. Districting creates 9 weeks out of the year in which the teams, cheer squads, etc are put on the road for an extended period of time. Tell us all about the safety concerns you would have of school bus driver fatigue to and from Chicago or Downstate.
That said, changing the playoffs to 1-32 across ALL classes would crrate similar travels, albeit for fewer weeks, and by week, for fewer teams. Given 1/2 of the teams make the playoffs, potential longer travel would exist for:
Week 1- 1/4 of the schools (128 potential)
Week 2- 1/8 of the schools (64 potential)
Week 3- 1/16 of the schools (32 potential)
Week 4- 1/32 of the schools (16 potential)
Week 5- toss up on who makes it.
Whereas under districting 256 schools will have potential long travel over ALL 9 weeks.
Any response should be accompanied by mileage comparisons of districting vs non-districting, along with a comparison of Strength of Schedule before and after districting. Simply because I did the Rochester district comparison and found their district, not including Rochester, had an AVERAGE ranking of 308....there are only 498 schools playing this season. Their current conference has an average ranking of 222, not including their #9 ranking.