The Maricopa High School athletics program will move to the Arizona Interscholastic Association 5A Conference Metro Region for the 2016-17 school year, playing some of Arizona’s largest schools.

The 2016 football schedule was set this week, and the rest of the athletic schedule should be announced by Feb. 18.

The new regions are part of the AIA restructuring that began before the 2015-16 school year. Reorganization was required after the current divisional model (Division I–VI) became unbalanced due to dozens of school appeals.

To ensure fairness in school size and competition, the AIA brought back the “A” class that existed until 2011-12 academic year and separated schools by the number of students enrolled. The schools were separated into six similarly sized conferences with the largest schools being placed in 6A down to the smallest schools in 1A.

Maricopa was placed in the 5A conference due to the school’s tremendous growth over the last decade.

“I think we’re going in the right direction, and it’s just a matter of continuing with that,” Maricopa Unified School District Athletic Director Mark Cisterna said. “When you start playing in the 5A conference, it’s not always about talent but the number of athletes you have.

“A lot of the schools in the 5A conference have all three levels of athletics (varsity, junior varsity and freshman teams), athletic venues that we don’t have, such as swimming, and that’s something we’ll need to start looking at as we move forward and keep growing.”

In order to give the Rams a chance to compete equally, Cisterna navigated the region selection process to end up in the Metro Region. The region features schools predominantly out of Glendale and north Phoenix.

“This is a big jump for Maricopa to play against these big schools,” Cisterna said. “There was some cooperation from the 5A conference to allow us to get [to the Metro Region], but it was by design. We’ll be up against some good teams, but once our kids realize they can play with these schools they’ll be OK.”

The Rams’ new region will feature unfamiliar foes in Apollo, Raymond S. Kellis and Ironwood high schools in Glendale, and Sunnyslope High School in north Phoenix. Current division rival Tempe McClintock High School joins Maricopa in the Metro Region, but the majority of the schools Maricopa is accustomed to playing were placed in the 4A conference.

“Our teams will be very young moving forward, but we have a good freshman class this year in all of our sports and they’ve done a great job,” Cisterna said. “It’s a foundation we can start building off of.”

For the coaching staff, the jump to 5A is both exciting and frustrating.

“I’ve thought about it a lot, and 5A, I’m excited for it,” football head coach Chris McDonald said. “It’s obviously going to be a step up, but I think that we have some kids coming through this program that are pretty good football players, so it’ll allow them to challenge their talents and challenge us as a program.”

Girls’ basketball head coach Marvin Mitchell believes his team can compete with anyone, but he is worried Maricopa will run out of athletes. A year after winning the AIA Division II State Championship, the girls’ basketball program barely had enough athletes to field varsity, junior varsity and freshman teams.

“Other schools definitely have more athletes to choose from,” Mitchell said. “I don’t think the realignment really makes sense in terms of student enrollment.”

The new alignment will take effect for the 2016-17 academic year and remain unchanged through the 2017-18 academic year. After two years, the conferences and regions will be re-evaluated, and teams at a competitive advantage or disadvantage will have the chance to appeal to a new level of competition.

This story appeared in the January issue of InMaricopa News.