The following suggestions are for HS athletic conferences that have fewer than eight members. Most of these smaller sized conferences face issues in scheduling, especially football. There are several ways to enhance smaller-sized conferences and to help make them stronger in the future.

1- SCHEDULING - One of the hardest issues facing smaller-sized conferences is scheduling issues, with football being the one that makes an athletic director sleepless over the year. Scheduling agreements can be made with other conferences, especially conferences with an uneven number of members. This type of agreement benefits both sides and also allows for future arrangements. Crossover games with other small-sized conferences can also be worked out and even put into a conference challenge.

Mutual opponents, possibly an independent or just a school from another conference, can be incorporated into scheduling, especially for a conference with only 4 members. This can work with sports like volleyball, basketball, baseball, etc. Should every conference member play this school it could count as an actual conference win or loss or even a tie-breaker. This allows your conference some added excitement during your season and also helps with scheduling issues.

Both of the above items also allows you to network with other schools for the future of your conference.

2-ASSOCIATE MEMBERSHIP - Some high school athletic conferences are doing this with football, especially if they have an uneven number of football playing members. An associate member usually plays in just one particular sport to fill a need. This concept can work both ways for a small -sized conference member. With a small sized conference your members may have a sport like wrestling that only one or two schools participate in. Two options, your members could find a regional conference who might like to add one or two members to fill-in for schools in their conference who do not have that sport. The other possibility is to have that sport added to your conference and plug in schools who might compete as independents in that sport. This method allows you to make added contacts and alliances for the future.

3-ALL CONFERENCE TEAMS - We recommend that in a small-sized conference you name only a first team and honorable mention. To many choices water down the product, this allows your student-athletes a real goal to shoot for.

4- FUTURE NEW MEMBERS - Why is your conference small-sized? That is a question you and the members of your conference know and should be discussed each and every year. This allows you to evaluate how the conference is progressing. Sometimes small-sized conferences cause their own problems when it comes to expanding the size of the conference. Conferences should understand that when accepting new members they may not meet your exact requirements. We’ve heard all of the excuses why conferences don’t add a member to the conference - to big, to small, don’t want a private school, don’t want a public school, to big, to small, to far, etc. We always tell conferences “if you are in a perfect situation, you wouldn’t have this problem.” Small-sized conferences do not have the luxury of waiting for the “perfect member”. Building a strong conference means you need to do certain things to make it work it in the future and that includes being flexible with future members.

We also encourage any conference to keep lines of communications open with possible members for the future. Circumstances change in many areas that might cause a school to look for a better fit for their athletic department. Keeping in touch with area school on a regular basis may benefit you with a new member down the road.

In closing we know that the stability of any conference is in it’s ability to have members working together to enhance the competition for each member school. The key to making it work is being committed to it’s future, not looking for the small-sized conference as a place to compete until you find another conference.