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Central Suburban League will realign to improve competitive balance

When the 2019-20 school year begins, the Central Suburban League will look a little different than it does today.

The conference is scheduled to be realigned ahead of the 2019 fall season with one school switching from the North division to the South division and another school making the opposite move.

Each division currently has six teams.

Which teams will switch will be determined after the current school year ends.

Chris Livatino, who is in his 12th year as athletic director at Evanston and is the current league president, said the formula used to determine which schools get reassigned considers school enrollment and success in the 20 sports in which all 12 schools compete.

Statistics will be calculated based on records and enrollment in the 2016-17 and 2017-18 school years. If a team finishes first in its division, it earns six points for its school. A team earns five points for a second-place finish, four points for a third-place finish and so on.

Each school’s points will be added together and then multiplied by a fraction. The numerator will be the school’s enrollment and the denominator will be the total enrollment of all league schools. The total conference enrollment is currently 28,044, according to the IHSA website.

The league plans to reassign two schools every two years, according to Livatino.

“We want to provide a more competitive balance where all teams have the best chance to achieve athletic success,” Livatino said.

John Catalano, who has been the athletic director at Glenbrook North for the last 13 years and was an assistant athletic director at Glenbrook South for six years prior to that, said the league’s athletic directors approved the plan on a 7-5 vote and the principals ratified their decision in another 7-5 vote. The votes were held last winter, Livatino said.

Livatino said the league started discussing realignment when Waukegan departed for the North Suburban Conference after the 2015-16 school year and Vernon Hills joined the league’s North division for the 2016-17 academic year. Ahead of the 2016 fall sports season, Niles North moved from the North division to the South division.

Waukegan currently has an enrollment of 4,618, while Vernon Hills’ enrollment is 1,335. Prior to the Cougars’ admittance, the conference’s smallest school was Deerfield, which currently has 1,635 students.

What has worked for the league for decades — two divisions based on enrollment with the larger schools in the South and the smaller ones in the North — is not so simple anymore, Livatino said.

“Waukegan was a pretty big school,” Livatino said. “One team was going to join the South and there were four that were less than 100 apart in enrollment. We started talking about ways to make it fair.”

Based on the current IHSA enrollment figures, four conference schools — Highland Park (2,041), Niles North (2,030), Glenbrook North (2,010) and Maine West (1,995) — are within 46 students of each other.

Based on enrollment, Livatino said schools like New Trier (3,999) and Evanston (3,285) are likely to remain in the South division permanently while Deerfield and Vernon Hills will probably always remain in the North division.

Catalano, whose school is one of the four most likely to move based on enrollment, said he does not like the plan.

“You don’t make a historic change on a 7-5 vote,” Catalano said. “This is an existential change and we are not all in agreement. It’s going to help some schools and hurt others. We are ready to accept what comes and move forward.”

Jarett Kirshner, the athletic director at Maine West, said the realignment plan was the product of hard work by athletic directors and administrators at all conference schools. He said it was important to find a solution rather than see the league fracture as other conferences have.

Prior to joining the Central Suburban, Vernon Hills was part of the seven-member North Suburban Conference Prairie Division. In August 2014, the six other members of the Prairie announced they were leaving to form a new conference, along with Grayslake North and Grayslake Central. It became the Northern Lake County Conference.

The Metro Suburban and Chicago Catholic are two other area conferences that have seen membership changes in recent years.

“We put in a lot of work,” Kirshner said. “It took us two years to work it out. What we want is the best level of competitive balance.”

Prior to becoming the Niles North athletic director in August 2016, Brett Bildstein spent five years as the athletic director at Lake View, a member of the Chicago Public League. He said anything that makes sports more competitive for the athletes is a good change; however, he does see some drawbacks.

“It’s the best thing we can do to improve competition for every school in the Central Suburban League,” Bildstein said. “That does not mean it’s going to be the best thing for each team.”

Bildstein said the Chicago Public League moves teams into and out of divisions each year based on performance. As a result, a school’s basketball and football teams could be in different divisions with different teams. He said that makes it harder to maintain rivalries.

Rivalries are one thing Steve Buti, Highland Park’s boys track and cross country coach, said will be hurt with realignment. He said there was healthy competition between the Giants and Niles North in both track and cross country prior to the Vikings’ move to the South division.

“You build up rivalries competing with the same teams year after year,” Buti said. “It’s a bummer we don’t have our rivalry with Niles North anymore.”

Niles West baseball coach Garry Gustafson, who was inducted into the Illinois High School Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2013, said the formula does not consider participation numbers, which can cause success to vary from sport to sport at the same school.

“In basketball (a school) can be very competitive but that does not translate into baseball success,” said Gustafson, who has also been a sophomore and JV football and JV girls basketball coach with the Wolves.

One doesn’t have to look far to find the exact scenario Gustafson described. New Trier and Niles North, the largest and smallest schools in the South division, respectively, began the week tied atop the boys basketball standings at 3-0. The Vikings were 13-0 overall and New Trier was 9-2.

However, Niles North finished the 2017 baseball season 16-20 overall and 3-13 in conference. The New Trier baseball team placed fourth in the Class 4A state tournament and ended the 2017 season 30-6 overall and 15-1 in conference.

One thing Gustafson said he likes is the realignment is based on two years of statistics rather than one. He said a school can have a very talented group of students in one class, which can produce championship teams. A school’s fortunes can change the following year due to graduation.

Some coaches, like Highland Park boys basketball coach Paul Harris, intend to concentrate on their athletes and let realignment take care of itself.

“I don’t worry about things that are out of my control,” Harris said. “This clearly falls under something that is out of my control.”

Steve Sadin is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.

Twitter @Pioneer_Press