Rod's Thursday thoughts

Spearfish will become a member of the Black Hills Conference beginning in the 2011-12 school year along with Red Cloud. How that will affect the Greater Dakota Conference and more importantly football scheduling beginning in a couple of years will be interesting to watch. Spearfish says that they are having declining enrollment. It looks like they may drop below the student number level for the Class AA classification level. How will that effect Sturgis? Douglas is the other AA school out west along with the two Rapid City schools. Douglas is a BHC conference member made up of all Class A schools except them and wants to stay as a BHC member. An why wouldn't they. They could stay with their football schedule which this year does not include a single AA team on it, have a decent year, make the playoffs and bump a ESD or another GDC school out of the playoffs. There was no crying about the system last year when Pierre was that team bumped or the 2 years prior to that when Huron didn't make it. It's going to take a Sioux Falls school (Possibly Watertown and Yankton also) to get bumped under the current system before a Cry of Injustice is made. A Rapid City school wouldn't even do it. So you know where the "Crying" has to come from! If the GDC drops to 7 schools that will cause scheduling problems for more sports than just football and then we will hear the call for the ressurection of the I-29 Conference.