The Silverton High football program will be facing some new league opponents starting this fall. The Foxes will remain in Class 5A but will be moving out of the Mid-Willamette Conference and into a new league that will include four MWC teams and two from the Northwest Oregon Conference, including perennial state power Wilsonville.
The new football-only league, part of a series of recommendations by an OSAA ad hoc committee, was approved by the OSAA board on Feb. 5, and will feature Silverton, Wilsonville, Canby, Central, McKay and Woodburn.
The MWC for football for at least the next two school years will consist of Corvallis, Crescent Valley, South Albany, West Albany, Lebanon and Dallas. The MWC will continue as a ten-team league for sports other than football.
So why is this happening? It’s kind of a trickle down thing. Aloha and Glencoe are moving down from 6A to 5A and into the Northwest league. LaSalle is moving up from 4A to 5A and into the Northwest league. And in an effort to prevent two ten-team leagues the OSAA is splitting Wilsonville and Canby off from the Northwest and forming a six-team MWC. Ten-team football leagues are problematic because they do not include opportunities for non-league games.
So is this a good idea? Here are some thoughts:
First, it represents more change and the OSAA, in my view, already tinkers too much with its district structures. Since 2017 Silverton has spent one year in a seven-team league, two years in an eight-team league, one year in a nine-team league and three years in a ten-team league. McKay comes in, Woodburn goes out, North Salem comes in and goes out, Woodburn comes back in, West Albany returns from 6A to 5A. And on and on.
Yes, I know the OSAA is trying to maximize the potential competitiveness of schools and individual programs, but you can’t legislate parity and, particularly at the high school level, you are always going to see success stories come (or not come) despite enrollment figures or the other factors the OSAA uploads into its computers.
Overall, it’s too much change. Teams should play with teams in their regions and traditional leagues should be preserved as much as practical. And it is always funky when you are in one league for one sport and in another for the rest of them.
Silverton officials are fine with the change.
“We will be very competitive in the league,” Foxes Athletic Director Andy Jones told Our Town. “Coach (Dan) Lever has a great core of returners, and the feeling is just tell us where we are playing and our kids will be there ready to play. It will rekindle an old rivalry with Canby from many years ago and create a new one with Wilsonville, who always runs a great program.
“We will still be members of the Mid-Willamette Conference for all our other athletic programs. I think it is exciting and will be fun to be a part of such a competitive league. Coach Lever will have the program ready for the new challenges.”
Silverton and Canby, Jones is correct to point out, used to play in the same Class 4A league (with McMinnville, Newberg, Woodburn, Dallas, Forest Grove, Tigard and Tualatin) before the OSAA went to a six-class system in the fall of 2006. And in a juicy bit of serendipity Foxes third-year coach Dan Lever is a Canby graduate.
“It’s weird not playing a nonleague game,” Lever told OSAA Today’s Jerry Ulmer about the outgoing-ten-team format. “What we’re probably going to see is more 5A-6A crossovers in those nonleague games, which is good. There’s a lot of good 5A football being played.”
Lever noted that the Foxes will lose their longest-term rival, Dallas, but the coach told Our Town the Dragons would be a high priority for a non-league matchup.
“I have 70-year-old men coming up to me and talking about wanting to beat Dallas,” Lever said. “It would be great to renew that game.”
Lever also echoed the words of his AD when he concluded, “I’m one of those guys who… just tell me who we’ve got and what time the bus leaves, when kickoff is, and let’s go strap it up and play ball. You can’t control who you play, but you can control how you play.”
It also must be stated that putting Silverton and Wilsonville into the same football league is a juicy prospect. And it also should be noted that Wilsonville and Canby are closer to Silverton than any of the Albany or Corvallis schools.
“It’ll be a good one, that’s for sure,” Lever said of the Wilsonville matchup. In the past ten years the Foxes and Wildcats each have won a 5A title, Wilsvonille has finished second on three occasions (to one for the Foxes) and both schools have made three other appearances in the semifinals. They played each other once, in the 2022 quarterfinals, with Wilsonville taking a 39-26 victory at Randall Stadium.
Yes, the delicious West Albany league rivalry the Foxes have had during roughly that same ten-year period (Silverton won seven of the 12 games and the teams split six playoff encounters) would go away, unless Lever and Jones can sked the Bulldogs in the nonleague campaign.
The football changes will not affect Kennedy. The Trojans still will play in the same Class 3A league for football and play in Class 2A for all other sports. JFK moved up to 3A for football two years ago when the OSAA shifted 2A to a nine-man approach.
