The Size Of The Dog In The Fight

I have a good friend who is one of the best pool players I have ever seen.

I will not mention his name, but many of you will know him. He has beaten most of the players around these parts soundly for more than 20 years. In fact, he is so much better than the rest of the players that he rarely can find anyone to play him competitively. Like those pool players around here who don't try to play him anymore, Nevada High School sports teams need to re-evaluate who they are playing.

There is no one I respect more than Kelly Bradham when it comes to Tiger sports. He became not just a fixture in covering area sports, he was the reflective soul of our athletic fortunes. Through wins and losses, Kelly stedfastly covered and reported the events in his columns. He made losing seasons mean something to the players and their families with the words he used. That is why I reluctantly have decided to disagree with him.

In a recent article Kelly reflected that Nevada could not afford to consider leaving their current division of the Southwest Conference. His reasons were sound and made a lot of sense. In the end, however, it is not what the conference offers our school's athletes, but rather what it is going to take away from them that matters most.

I checked out some of the towns Nevada has played in recent years to see how they compare in numbers to Nevada. These are the current enrollments taken from last year and will be used to determine classifications for this year and next: Ray Pec, 1,454; Camdenton, 1,330; Neosho, 1,254; Webb City, 1,073; Carthage, 1,061; Warrensburg, 1,003; Willard, 985; Mac County, 974; Carl Junction, 807; Nevada, 794; Harrisonville, 784; Bolivar, 737; O'Hara, 704; Clinton, 634; Pleasant Hill, 656; Cassville, 638; Monett, 578; Seneca, 567; Aurora, 558; Knob Noster, 462; East Newton, 459; Warsaw, 453; Mt. Vernon, 451; El Dorado Springs, 426; Lamar, 394; Butler, 339; and Stockton, 300.

In my youth, Nevada was near the top of this list. I remember when Carl Junction came in to our conference and we used to feel it was almost a gift game to play such a small school in the old Big Ten.

America was once a country of mostly farm lands. There was a need for a lot of labor in rural areas. Today the rural areas of America are dwindling to nothing. Young families are moving in mass to the metropolitan suburbs.

That is what is happening in towns like Carl Junction. When we went there recently for the districts we could not locate a restaurant to stop and eat.

The locals at the game told us that everyone goes 8 miles down the road to Joplin to eat. The only thing they have are tons of new houses and a magnificent new High School which they think the town might actually outgrow in the not too distant future.

Nevada has not fallen down the ladder in numbers by accident. While our local population has shown some small increases, the growth in the numbers of children has flattened out. Nevada's largest increase in population has been in the numbers of people over the age of 40. We have become a place where one can enjoy life more economically in our later years.

Many of those other towns like Carl Junction, Webb City, Carthage, Neosho, and Mac County are growing faster. The metropolitan area surrounding Joplin is the most likely cause for this increase, and the numbers of younger people with families is increasing faster than any other group. We are in a battle we cannot win. It has taken us 20-30 years to get where we are now.

What do you think the next two decades will see? In one of my articles about Nevada about four years ago, I reminded people that in the 1880s Nevada was the 10th largest city in the entire state.

So what should we do? Look at the list above. Think about the teams we have played in sports from that list in the past few years. When was the last time we won a conference football game? We did not get here yesterday or the year before. The problem is that it is going to get worse, because our growth is stagnant and the other schools we play are just growing too fast.

Imagine you are a prospective football player for next year's team.

What is your mindset? Do you really feel you have a chance to go out and compete with all these larger schools year after year? I very much want Nevada to be in a conference and have our athletes enjoy all the opportunities that that offers. What I don't want them to have to face year after year is trying to compete with schools who are larger and getting larger by the day. Those numbers above are only going to get worse.

We have some choices. First we can do nothing. We can tell our kids to not worry about the numbers problem. Just work harder. We can do something drastic and reactive like notify the conference that we can no longer compete and jump ship. Or we can do something brave and smart. We can talk to the State, our conference members, and our school district patrons and make some plans for the future.

In another decade some of those schools that have passed us by a few hundred students will be much much larger. Carl Junction has gone from one of the smallest districts to the largest in their division of the conference, and they are only going to grow even faster. I cannot imagine Carl's fellow conference schools with 400-500 students wanting to look forward to playing a school that will soon have well over a thousand.

There is no quick fix and I am not suggesting one. But a fix is not only in order it is a necessity. I don't think I will live long enough to see us beat Webb City in football, and wins against other current conference members seems unfavorable. To refuse to see the population changes is foolish. It is time to admit that something is going to have to be done.

Being in a conference does not mean much to a player if they feel they have no chance. Right now we still compete in some areas, but for how long? To do nothing is to ignore facts. All the hard work in the world cannot overcome numbers.