Schools support "Rural" division

Not surprisingly, some Panhandle high schools strongly support a movement within the Florida High School Athletic Association that would create a “Rural Division” to enhance balanced competition for their sports teams.

The measure, scheduled to come before the FHSAA Board of Directors on June 15 for approval to move forward, includes eight team sports. It would discontinue small public schools competing against schools of similar enrollment located in metropolitan areas.

Often those are private schools that can attract student-athletes from a population of 250,000 or more.

Basketball coaches Derek Kurnitsky of Port St. Joe and Tim Alford of Ponce de Leon have had teams reach the latter stages of the regional tournament and sometimes the Final Four in Lakeland only to be overmatched.

“We’re excited about it, we just think it would help keep it on a competitive playing field,” said Alford, who has coached girls basketball at PDL for 16 years. Our last trip to the Final Four we played a team that had six Division I signees on one high school team.

“They had beaten the Class 6A team that won the state championship 51-21.”

Ponce de Leon lost 65-30 in the semifinals in 2007 to eventual 2A champion First Academy out of Orlando.

“Talent comes and goes, but at least with a good team like we had then you like to have a chance,” Alford said. “I heard the statement, ‘What’s the use, we won’t win when we get down there anyway,’ and we’d only lost one game all season to a public school.”

Kurnitsky has for six seasons continued the legacy of excellence for boys basketball at Port St. Joe, but success in Lakeland hasn’t been forthcoming like it was during the 1990s under previous head coach Vern Eppinette.

“I think it’s been a topic of conversation around St. Joe for a long time,” Kurnitsky said. “Even when Coach Eppinette’s last team got beat by Champagnat their players spoke several different languages.

“Seriously, it’s like an AAU tournament when you go down there. Those teams have (signees) from Louisville and Kentucky. We just coach the kids in the neighborhood. I commend the FHSAA and what they’re doing to try and make it at least fair.”

Kurnitsky added that last season the Tiger Sharks might have fielded their best team in a decade, and projected that if they had reached the state championship game could have been beaten by 20 to 30 points by a large city private school.

“I really think this has got a shot,” Kurnitsky said of the projected Rural Division, which could be instituted as early as the 2011-12 school year. “If you’re a baseball player at Ponce de Leon, or a girls basketball player at Paxton, it gives them more motivation. It gives them a chance.”

Bozeman School athletic director and football coach Loren Tillman said he attended one of the public responses meetings the FHSAA held Thursday in Port St. Joe. He’s hopeful that the Bucks could qualify for the rural designation as determined by the Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development.

Initially the enrollment cutoff is projected for schools of 500 or less in grades 9-12. Tillman said that Bozeman has slightly more than that, but speculated the threshold could become 600 or less depending on how many schools are interested statewide.

“How they interpret this or make it happen is going to be a mystery before we get everybody signed up and see what sports those schools have,” Tillman said. “I think it would put our kids on more of a level playing field.

“Some of these other schools have a possibility to choose from so many more athletes. You look at (former district opponent) Florida High’s web page and on the front of it it says ‘We have kids from five counties and three countries.’ Bozeman and other rural schools aren’t going to have that.”

Tillman said that if such a division is formed by the FHSAA and Bozeman isn’t included that it possibly could cause some scheduling problems for the Bucks, who again this upcoming season will play in District 1-1A in football, comprising nine smaller Panhandle public schools.

“In football we’re pretty much playing rural schools,” he said. “Right now we’re not on the bus more than an hour. If they go in and change it and we didn’t get in we’d be between Pensacola and Tallahassee.

“Since we went into high school I think this is the best plan. I know they’ve got to work out some kinks, but when we reclassify I hope we’re going to be in the rural classification for the 2011 school year.”