Some athletic administrators believed as far back as October that they’d run into trouble scheduling games this week, and they were absolutely correct.

Those administrators felt that giving coaches the autonomy to create their own schedules for the next school year was a mistake. That partly came to fruition after the athletic administrators, serving as conference region reps, struggled to schedule the final freedom games this week that coaches couldn’t fill.

All of Arizona’s high school sports teams completed their schedules without the help of their region reps, with the exception of football. That left the region reps this week with the task of scheduling 30 freedom football games.

But that process didn’t run smoothly, as the reps labored to pencil in matchups that coaches liked and followed certain division criteria. After the meetings, the region reps walked away believing that a different scheduling system is needed.      

“It’s horrible,” said Joe Paddock, a region rep and district athletic director for the Amphitheatre Public Schools District. “This process is horrible. I’m still of the opinion, as I told the (Arizona Interscholastic Association executive) board in the October (executive board) meeting, if you are going to have the schools do it, then they have to fill out the entire schedule.”

This week, the head-scratching for region reps began as soon the members of the 5A Conference sat down to fill their conference’s football schedule openings in Division I.

For the 5A reps, Mountain Pointe, which had four open freedom game dates, was their biggest headache. As the 5A reps attempted to find four opponents for Mountain Pointe, some of the inequities in high school athletics in Arizona reared their head, prolonging the 5A’s meeting.  

Mountain Pointe tried its best to set up its four freedom games, sending 30-plus requests, but nobody accepted an invitation to play the 2013 state title contender.

Following the geographic and division criteria that the AIA’s executive board passed last week to help teams such as Mountain Pointe with their schedules, the 5A reps broke up already-scheduled games of teams that were near Mountain Pointe. Two of those programs that wound up on Mountain Pointe’s schedule, Phoenix Union High School District schools North and Maryvale, struggle to compete against elite teams and would have never likely scheduled Mountain Pointe.

But without a Phoenix Union District representative at the 5A meeting to oppose the scheduling of the Phoenix Union schools with Mountain Pointe, North and Maryvale became easy targets.

Cesar Chavez and Hamilton were the other two freedom game opponents chosen for Mountain Pointe, but Mountain Pointe and Hamilton, which were represented at the 5A meeting, didn’t want to play each other. But at the end the 5A reps had not choice but to schedule a Hamilton-Mountain Pointe game.

Opposing to play each other didn’t put Hamilton and Mountain Pointe in a good light, especially Mountain Pointe, which didn’t raise a stink about playing North and Maryvale.

Hamilton and other schools that had games broken up to accommodate Mountain Pointe likely had legitimate reasons for complaining, however, because they followed the first process that was put in place to schedule freedom games. To set up Mountain Pointe with Hamilton, the 5A reps broke up the game Hamilton had scheduled against Ironwood Ridge.

But that move unmasked another problem about how high school programs are represented at conference meetings. Ironwood Ridge is a 5A Conference school and plays in Division II.

Instead of scheduling a game for a team, Ironwood Ridge, that they were responsible for, the 5A Conference reps decided to let the 4A Conference schedule Ironwood Ridge’s freedom game that opened up after Hamilton was paired with Mountain Pointe. The perception right now is that D-I schools belong to the 5A Conference, and D-II schools belong to the 4A Conference.

The use of “conferences” and “divisions” has confused high school fans. The AIA used to have just conferences until it introduced divisions a couple of years ago.

There are currently five conferences but six football divisions. The division-conference topic has led to questions about which conference represents which division and teams, since some teams from the same school play in different divisions.

“Something has to be resolved,” Paddock said. “We can’t continue having competition separate from representation.”

The 4A Conference reps almost kicked back Ironwood Ridge’s open freedom game problem to the 5A Conference.

But a solution emerged for the 4A when a 5A rep who attended the 4A meeting, Gilbert district athletic director Mark Cisterna, said that one of his 4A schools could travel to play a Flagstaff school. That gave the 4A reps the freedom they needed to schedule their remaining games, including a game for Ironwood Ridge against a worthy opponent, Liberty.

In the future, the cooperation Cisterna and the 4A showed likely is needed to solve the scheduling, division and conference puzzles.