A lot of change happened in Montana high school athletics this week.

Due to declining enrollments, Libby voted to move its sports programs from Class A to Class B, joining Anaconda in its move down to a more manageable conference.

The move, while a contested one in Libby, will likely join the Loggers with Lincoln County counterparts Eureka and Troy in District 7B. There, the school will be competing against schools closer to its size, on the higher end of Class B, instead of toiling against programs with twice as many kids to draw from.

But while the move is likely to benefit Libby, Anaconda and Plentywood — which dropped to Class C this week — in the long run, it leaves a question in what is left of Class A.

What now?

With only 20 schools left, and four disproportionate divisions, realignment will be necessary. As it stands, there will be four schools in the Northwest, five in the Southwest and Central and six in the East. With the current structure of equal bids to the playoffs, some type of change will need to be made to keep the process as close to equal as possible.

“That will probably be our No. 1 topic,” Polson activities director and football coach Scott Wilson said of the Class A meetings, set to be held in June. “I would be very surprised if we don’t change the four-division system we’re in. To keep it to four we would have to do too much rearranging that would effect multiple schools.”

To keep four equal divisions with five teams each, there would need to be a lot of shuffling. Two schools would have to leave the Central and one the East only to hope more schools don’t change classes in the near future and cause upheaval again.

With the Class A in flux, Belgrade could move up to Class AA with another few years of growth and both Glendive and Lewistown are stemming off a move down, administrators will look to divide the conference into a structure that will withstand any possible reclassification in the near future.

Early suggestions are split between going back to a three-division format that existed before the most recent shift or splitting to two 10-team conferences.

Each format has its benefits and its challenges.

The three-division model creates smaller, more manageable groups to work with. Three groups of six or seven schools would keep most of the current rivalries in tact and allow for easier scheduling and playoff separation.

It’s once the playoffs start that the biggest issue arises, trying to meld an odd number of divisions with an even number of playoff spots. In an eight-team state basketball tournament, the divisions would need to be put on a rotation that forces one group to only bring two teams to state instead of three. Scheduling can be more difficult with

A two-division model would clear up the issues of playoff division and certainly raise the difficulty of in-conference play. The simpler split of 10 teams between East and West would presumably pit best teams from each half of the state. With better competition, the playoffs would likely see a truer representation of the strongest teams in the state.

The downside, however, lies in the size. Because the conferences are so large, and there are limits to the number of games a school can play in a given season, many teams would not play each other. Tiebreakers would become more normal and more complicated. There also is the issue of travel. A Western conference could see Columbia Falls or Browning travel to Dillon for a regular season game. An Eastern conference could have Sidney to Belgrade.

“I think they both have good things,” Wilson said. “I don’t know if one way is really better than the other. I think the thing everybody will have to look at is how to help schools without having a huge budget increase.”

The final vote on realignment won’t come until the Montana High School Association’s annual meetings in November. Until then, schools and administrators have time to hash out the best possible fits and scenarios for everyone involved.

Libby and Anaconda found their comfortable home this week, it may take a bit longer for Class A to fit into its new lighter self.