The reigning champions of Foothills Athletic Council senior basketball won’t be around to defend their titles.
The Foothills Falcons have pulled out of the league, with team representatives citing too large of a discrepancy between the larger 4A school and other teams in the council, the majority of which are at either 2A or the 3A level.
All four of the Falcons teams, the JV boys and girls and both senior teams, won’t play in the FAC this basketball season.
“There’s a bit of an uneven playing field – the 2A schools playing against 4A schools,” said Vince Hunter, Falcons senior girls coach. “We have the advantage of having more kids coming out and more options.
“It wasn’t always competitive – and that’s not to take away how hard the other schools worked. We are proud of the other schools in the area.”
Foothills is a 4A school with more than more than 800 students, 3A schools are between 400 and 799 students and 2A schools are between 200 and 399 students. In the FAC, Holy Trinity Academy made the jump to 4A this year. While Strathmore and High River’s Highwood High are 3A, the remaining schools, Strathcona-Tweedsmuir, Oilfields, Notre Dame Collegiate and Holy Cross are 2A.
The Falcons Senior boys have won the FAC title nine of the past 10 years. The girls haven’t been as dominant, in fact the Falcons eked out a one-point victory last season over the then 3A HTA Knights in the final.
Hunter said an issue with Foothills teams last season was the Falcons would play a smaller team during the week in council play and would then find they were not ready for the opening game of a 4A tournament on the weekend.
“We would go out to play 4A tournaments and often it would be a real shocker for us,” he said.
Hunter said the Falcons will focus on 4A weekend tournaments and potentially exhibition games during the week.
Sam Aiello, head coach of the HTA Knights boys team and commissioner of FAC basketball, said the Falcons will be missed – despite his team being on the losing side of many council finals to Foothills over the past decade.
“We are disappointed we don’t get a chance to play Foothills,” Aiello said. “It’s great for the community to come out and watch it.”
Amron Gwilliam, Foothills Falcons Senior boys head coach, said alternatives were looked at before the Comp decided to pull out of the council.
He echoed Hunter in saying the wide diversity in size between schools hurt the Foothills program.
“We have participated in that league for a number of years and we have had a lot of success,” Gwilliam said. “For the past several years we felt the league didn’t provide us with the amount of competition that we needed to get to the next level.
“We tried a number of things within the FAC to try and make it work better for all the teams that were involved… All of them we’re rejected by the league. We thought it was in our best interest to cut ties and do what we think is best for the school and our kids.”
Foothills put in a proposal for the Falcons JV teams to play at the FAC senior level but it was rejected by other members of the council.
Hunter added the possibility of games with the cross-town rivals Holy Trinity Academy Knights has not been eliminated.
“We have emailed over to their school and asked for a home-and-home series,” Hunter said. “These are two amazing schools and I would absolutely try to accommodate it.”
So far, Aiello is hesitant for the series.
“We thought it would be better having that in the confines of our league rather than just exhibition games -- it was their decision to not be in our league so we will just see them at zones…,” he said. “For us the importance of the league and all of our communities around us, staying together was more important than playing an exhibition game against the Comp.”
Ken Zelez, coach of the Strathcona-Tweedsmuir Spartans senior girls, has been on the losing end of a few blowouts to the Comp over his past two years.
Although, the coach of the 2A Spartans is going to miss playing against the Comp, he understands why the Falcons pulled out.
“I can sympathize with the decision for sure -- I have known those guys over there for years, they are good guys,” he said. “I can understand why they would want more competition.”
Scott Royce, Knights senior girls basketball coach, said HTA and Foothills have been competitive the past few years. The Knights and the Falcons split their two games last year, however one of them was Foothills winning the title game by one.
He said there’s nothing the Knights can do about Foothills leaving the league and HTA will focus on the FAC and their tournament schedule.
There is still a chance the Falcons and Knights will play this year. With HTA making the jump to 4A this year, there is a possibility the two schools will meet in South Central Zone playoffs at the end of the season.
