Austin McNorton
Sports Media
Community college is a big deal if you’re an athlete. It is your first step into making it big in a four-year college sport. Now, let’s say that first step to get to that point grows smaller and now more people are fighting to climb it, it’s going to be hard to get to the top and even the professional level.
On Thursday, Oct. 20, presidents from the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference schools met at Butler. The 19 presidents voted unanimously to remove the out-of-state roster limits and potentially add full ride scholarships. This will start in the 2017-18 academic year, depending on a vote in April of 2017.
Dr. Mike Calvert, Pratt Community College president and interim president of the KJCCC, said that the primary initiative is to keep the conference united.
“The number one goal was to keep the conference together,” Calvert said.
When asked about how the meeting went, Dr. Kim Krull, president of Butler, commented on the meeting.
“It took a while, but we did what we needed to do,” Krull said.
Now the main reason that this meeting even occurred was because four of the eight football playing schools in the conference were threatening to leave including Coffeyville, Independence, Dodge City and the leader of the movement, Garden City.
Now, honestly, this move by these schools felt like they were tying the hands of those not agreeing with them to make a decision. It seemed like they were sort of saying, “If you don’t make these changes to how we want them, then we are just going to leave because we aren’t happy.” This is sort of a sad move that you were so upset you put the threat of leaving to make everyone agree with you. This, without thinking of some of the problems, it could cause in your own state, in order to try and win games.
The problem is that now Kansas High School football players won’t have much of a chance to compete at a community college level because some, well frankly, most of their playing time will be going to someone else from a different state. It’s not just football I’m worried about either for local Kansas high schoolers. It’s in other sports as well, like baseball and basketball where roster sizes are small enough as it is. I’m afraid that they will give up on their dreams of being an athlete at the college or even professional level because now they know that their chances just became more difficult.
I then got another perspective on the whole situation from the previous president of Dodge City Community College and Coffeyville Community College, my grandfather, Dr. Don Woodburn.
“You have to understand that schools like Butler and Hutchinson were sitting in the perfect location to recruit the best Kansas talent out of Wichita where schools like Coffeyville don’t have much of a chance because those kids don’t want to be that far away from home,” Woodburn said.
“I think Butler’s and Hutchinson’s dominance in football and basketball is over with this change.”
The conference is now going to become so competitive with all the new talent coming in, so he is very right with that.
Overall, though, I think this hurts Kansas athletes’ chances, but it also makes the conference more interesting, so we will see what happens in the future.