3A SOUTHERN LEAGUE: Depletion of league causes scheduling headaches

Moapa Valley was scarcely challenged on its way to a second straight Class 3A state football title last season.

The Pirates won their final eight games by a combined score of 321-100, went 3-0 in Southern League play and routed Truckee (Calif.) 35-16 in the state title game. They also won 49-9 at Desert Oasis, a first-year 4A program with no seniors that was playing an independent schedule.

But how would Moapa Valley look against 4A playoff-caliber teams?

Thanks in part to the continued depletion of the 3A ranks, fans will get a glimpse this season.

Moapa Valley has scheduled games at Rancho and Foothill — both Sunrise Region playoff teams last season — as well as new 4A school Sunrise Mountain, which will play an independent schedule.

“We were fortunate enough to scramble and find anything to get Foothill and Rancho to play us,” Moapa Valley coach Brent Lewis said. “There’s the stigma that 3A schools can’t compete with 4A schools.

“If a 4A school loses to a 3A school, it’s kind of a black eye on them. By getting those games, we’ve got to prove ourselves. Their reputation is on the line, but so is ours.”

With Faith Lutheran moving from 3A to 4A this season, only three teams remain in the 3A Southern League, with only 10 3A teams left statewide.

The move created a scheduling headache for schools such as Moapa Valley and Virgin Valley that already had to juggle considerable travel costs with a shrinking league that lost Pahrump Valley to 4A last year.

“We only have two league games, so we’ve got to go out and find seven nonleague games,” Virgin Valley coach Kirk Hafen said. “That’s pretty tough to do.

“The (Clark County School District) did help by assigning us a couple of the Vegas schools.”

Virgin Valley wound up with home games against 4A programs Legacy, Clark and Sunrise Mountain.

After opening the season against rival Basic on Aug. 28, Boulder City has three more 4A opponents on its schedule — Sunrise Mountain twice, Faith Lutheran and Eldorado.

Though all three teams in the league are guaranteed a spot in the postseason, there is more incentive than in years past to win the regular-season title.

Whereas the Nos. 2 and 3 seeds will meet in a league playoff game to determine who advances to the state tournament, the No. 1 seed receives an automatic bid to the state semifinals.

That’s an advantage over the teams from the North, who have no such bye.

“I think it makes it more important than most regular seasons,” Boulder City coach Alex Kazel said. “There’s a huge incentive to finish first in the league.”

The trio of coaches had a mixed reaction to when the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association released a proposed realignment plan in May to go from four classes to three divisions.

The proposal, which in June was postponed until at least the 2010-11 school year, would have sent 14 4A schools into a Division II that also would have included the current 3A schools.

“They bit off way more than they could chew,” Lewis said. “I don’t think we needed 20 schools. What would have been satisfying is if we could have brought Faith and Pahrump back in our league and searched for three or four schools to bring to our league.”

Lewis said he might also favor a scenario in which teams could move back and forth.

Kazel said the long-term solution to realignment could be in finding competitive balance.

“I think you have to do it program to program,” he said. “I don’t think you can blanket one school down because some schools have strong programs in one sport or another.”

Hafen said he liked the proposal.

“We’ve been out here where we’re doing a lot of travel,” Hafen said. “With budget cuts, it would have been a good way to go.”

Despite the turmoil the league has been coping with, the goal for each team is unchanged.

“The thing about our kids is, they always plan to be successful,” Lewis said. “I don’t think any team I’ve coached has gone into a season not expecting to win.

“That’s what we talk about all the time; anything less than a state championship, we consider a failure.”