Addressing effects of reclassifying school sports

It’s been just about three weeks since the Northeast A League shrunk from a size-7 to a much trimmed-down size-4.

Had this been a human-driven weight loss program, it might have been a welcome outcome. However, this is high school athletics. And when a conference loses that much weight, that fast, it generates potentially unhealthy side effects.

NEA athletic directors knew in advance what was about to hit when the board of directors of the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association approved their quadrennial slicing and dicing of high school sports leagues in a Jan. 21 meeting.

Shifts i...