Critics of sports realignment put on press in fourth period.

Byline: David Steves The Register-Guard

SALEM - South Eugene High School teacher Nancy Myer knows all about the toll paid by student athletes when their teams travel to distant basketball games, track meets or soccer matches.

A psychology teacher, Myer doesn't have to be there with them for the hours spent on the bus traveling to the coast, east of the mountains or to the southernmost reaches of the state.

"I see kids who come in exhausted in the morning," Myer said during testimony Monday. "In my class, I can tell absolutely what season it is in sports, because they are struggling to keep up."

The lawyers may have done most of the questioning during Monday's challenge by the Eugene, Salem-Keizer and Medford school districts to the proposed expansion from four to six athletic classifications.

But it was the teachers, coaches, parents and team boosters who took center stage during the daylong discussion of whether the resulting leagues would force students to travel too much and schools to spend too much on transportation from Eugene to Southern Oregon and from Salem-Keizer to Central Oregon.

After spending the day in a state office building hearing room questioning and cross-examining witnesses, Eugene School District lawyer Joel DeVore said it was testimony from witnesses such as Myer "who made very real to everyone the impact on students. It helped a lot to have our people here to tell our story."

For most of the six-plus-hour hearing, lawyers questioned and cross-examined witnesses from the Eugene district and its two high schools, South and Sheldon, that would be designated Class 6A schools. Enrollment at those schools exceeds the 1,521-student cutoff used by the Oregon School Activities Association to determine which schools belonged in the largest classification.

The result would place the remaining five Eugene-Spring- field high schools in one league for smaller Class 5A schools and place South Eugene and Sheldon in a Class 6A league with Roseburg, Grants Pass, South Medford and North Medford high schools. The shift would require as much as a 340-mile round trip for league play - on par, DeVore said, with forcing Portland schools into a Seattle athletic league.

The hearings officer, Eugene attorney William D. Young, will receive the opposing sides' closing-argument briefs next Monday. After that, he can issue his proposed order. He faces no timeline, but said he was sensitive to the urgency in resolving the long-simmering issue so schedules could be finalized for the fall sports season.

Following Young's action, the task falls to state Superintendent of Public Instruction Susan Castillo to make a final decision.

Monday's event was the latest in the dispute between the OSAA and the school districts that oppose the realignment plan it established last fall. The plan was intended to address concerns from smaller schools that they could not compete with larger ones.

Prior to Monday's hearing, the dissenting districts and the OSAA met in two all-day mediation sessions in April. They failed to produce an accord.

This hearing was conducted more like a courtroom proceeding than a school board meeting. The only testimony entered into the record came from witnesses called by attorneys, who swore an oath before answering questions.

Jonathan Radmacher, the OSAA's legal counsel, questioned Eugene witnesses, including teacher-coaches, athletic directors, a school board member and a booster club leader to try to establish that the new league alignments could be made to work - not just by the vast majority of districts that stand ready to move ahead, but also by those few that are resisting the OSAA board's decision.

"Just because one or two or three don't like it doesn't mean they didn't reach a good result or a proper result," he said.

Radmacher let few assertions go uncontested. Dave Hancock, the South Eugene High athletic director and boys basketball coach, said a school bus driver's death three years ago while bringing the team back over the mountains from a game in Redmond was a reason his school shouldn't be required to travel regularly over Southern Oregon mountain passes to play teams from Grants Pass and Medford.

"A bus driver dying on a freeway would be pretty dangerous, too," Radmacher said.

Sheldon High School booster Debra Kamp was one of several parents who spent the day in the audience, even though the format would not allow her and others to weigh in. She's had four children attend Sheldon, where they've been on the swim, water polo, volleyball and track and field teams.

Kamp said she hoped the lawyers and officials could appreciate what it would mean if rivalries with other Eugene and Springfield schools were relegated to the occasional non-league contests.

She said meets and matches with schools from Grants Pass, Roseburg and Medford wouldn't be the same as those crosstown competitions that bring together parents from Eugene and Springfield who in previous years watched their kids play Little League and youth sports together.

"There needs to be a balance," she said. "It's not just about competition. We need that community feeling of everybody being there to watch."

CORRECTION (ran 5/10/2006): Nancy Meyer's name was misspelled in a story on Page A1 Tuesday about the Oregon Schools Activities Association hearing in Salem.

CAPTION(S):

Joel DeVore said that sending Eugene athletic teams to Southern Oregon would be akin to making Portland schools play regularly in Seattle. Dave Hancock, the South Eugene High athletic director, listens intently to testimony Monday on the state plan to reclassify downstate teams.