The organization that regulates school sports in Alaska must reevaluate the classification of a Fairbanks Catholic school’s boys basketball team.
That’s the main outcome of a partial preliminary injunction Fairbanks Superior Court Judge Earl Peterson granted May 9 in a lawsuit Monroe Catholic High School filed last year.
The school’s suit against the Alaska School Activities Association sought injunctive relief, looking to force the organization to reanalyze their basketball team’s records in relation to guidelines the association’s board adopted in 2020. The school hopes their team would then return to playing in a lower division, where they were formerly state champions.
The court order doesn’t immediately affect which division the team will play in, but it does require the requested review.
Fleur Roberts, the attorney representing the private high school, said Tuesday the decision is a win for the Rams. She said she thinks the order should essentially end the case.
“It’s over. It doesn’t matter what the outcome is. We’re just asking that we be considered for eligibility [under] the rules that existed at the time,” Roberts said.
High school basketball teams compete across four different divisions in Alaska, from 1A to 4A. Monroe won the boys basketball state championship during their final year in the 3A division. That was in 2021.
The following season, the roughly 100-student school moved up to the 4A division – where Alaska’s largest schools play – due to the classification system the activities association’s board of directors had adopted in Nov. 2020.
The system created new measures that applied to basketball programs within 25 miles of Fairbanks, Anchorage, Wasilla and Soldotna. The measures set up a two-step process for analyzing those teams’ rosters and performance levels to decide their division.
In 2021, KTVF reported that the changes sparked disagreement because they only affected two private schools, including Monroe, which felt targeted by the new system.
But Billy Strickland, the ASAA executive director, said at the time that the system was not intended strictly to impact private schools.
“When we put that together, we didn’t just say private schools. We basically said schools located within those municipalities where we are seeing a lot of students that play outside of their zone school,” he said.
Monroe twice challenged the changes in state court through administrative appeals in 2021 and 2022 and were unsuccessful both times.
But the lawsuit took a different approach.
“It finally got to the point where Monroe decided, ‘Well, we’ll just go ahead, bite the bullet, play 4A because … we know we’re not gonna do as well against 4A opponents,” Roberts said.
Accruing losses against 4A opponents would matter because the activities association’s 2020 system had also established a method for reanalyzing a team’s performances after three years of play to determine if a school should drop a division, stay put or move up.
Monroe became eligible for that review in April of 2023, but Roberts says another change the association’s board adopted that May spoiled the Rams’ chances of returning to 3A.
The part of the school’s injunction request that Peterson granted means the association will have to evaluate the school’s classification according to the 2020 guidelines, not taking into account any adjustments the association’s board made in May 2023.
Still, how that will affect Monroe Catholic is unclear. The Rams’ boys basketball team has been competitive in 4A. They finished with a winning record each year they’ve played in the top division, and the school got third in this year’s state tournament.
The two-step analysis also isn’t restricted to winning percentage. It can additionally factor in the makeup of a teams roster, including variables such as transfers, students playing on the team from outside the schools boundaries, and whether players participate in “out of season” games.
But Roberts says the school is still “very confident” the court-ordered review will send them back to the lower division.
The order says the activities association has to complete their evaluation by June 30, and a status hearing is currently scheduled for July 9.
An official with the activities association said they would not provide comment for this story because the litigation is ongoing.