The Emporia Gazette published a story advocating for separating the 2A and 1A classifications from the state baseball tournament in light of a 1A school having not won the 2A/1A championship in more than 25 years.
After reporting on 2A Colgan crushing 1A Marmaton Valley in the 2025 state playoffs with an 11-1 mercy-rule, I understood the author’s point. Colgan is in Pittsburg, population 20,257.
Marmaton Valley is in Moran, population 472.
Coaches may boast only nine players from either team can take the field, so their hosts populations don’t matter.
But they’re omitting the fact that larger communities have larger talent pools along with more property taxes to fund athletic training and facilities.
With such disparities, creating a 1A state tournament makes sense.
KSHSAA officials may see it as why bother rearranging the deck chairs on the proverbial Titanic. Maybe they figure that in 20 years they will just have to combine the 2A and 1A tournaments all over again.
What is this looming Titanic? It’s population collapse. Why bother creating a tournament for teams who may not exist in 20 years?
The very real population collapse in America is from millennials and Generation Z not having children and moving away.
It’s basic math. If families don’t have two children to replace two parents, then there’s population collapse.
Mix in a housing market too expensive for young couples to rent or buy, especially when there are options in larger cities with more amenities for almost the same price, and once-flourishing schools now have dwindling student populations.
Student-athletes are the victims in a long line of victims, but the gravity of their victimhood increases with each generation.
School consolidation seems great because it saves taxpayers from supporting facilities that house only a few hundred students.
John Taylor, Iola wrestling coach, was not happy after the regional tournament in Paola.
Though he got a kid in the state tournament, he felt there should have been many more. Regional tournaments are designated by teams and only so many teams can fill each regional tournament. Schools with only one wrestler count as a team. Eventually all of those one-wrestler teams bumped Iola up to 4A. Just like Marmaton Valley, it was Iola wrestlers facing Pittsburg, Paola and many larger schools.
