The Sedona Oak Creek School District Governing Board voted unanimously during its Nov. 4 meeting to petition the Arizona Interscholastic Association to move the Scorpion boys and girls soccer season from the fall to the winter in 2026. Board member Karen McClelland was absent.
The board tabled an initial discussion about the change to move the season during its Oct. 14 meeting ahead of the AIA’s petition deadline of Oct. 17.
SOCSD met the filing deadline and the paperwork was filed ahead of the school board vote to move the soccer seasons with the intention “that if there’s a change, that we would be able to reach out to the AIA if we wanted to move back to the fall,” Athletic Director Peter Brock said.
“We feel that it was very important to have that open discussion and be transparent and get feedback from the community as well from the board before making that decision,” Superintendent Tom Swaninger, Ph.D., said following the meeting. “But technically, by the letter of the law, it would have been something that we could have done at a site level.”
Reducing the travel demands of the season and the logistical challenges of bus operations are the primary reasons cited for the schedule change. Not having enough bus drivers has been a recurring problem for the district for the last five years and has made extracurriculars more challenging for the district.
“We’re always looking for more bus drivers,” Swaninger said.
It’s “also trying to balance the schedule, so that way we didn’t have so many sports just in the fall to create more opportunities for kids to be able to play sports in the fall in general,” Brock said, noting that currently only the boys and girls basketball programs compete in the winter, so the change would reduce schedule overlap outside of soccer and basketball and could provide more options to more students.
Some families have expressed concern about the overlap of basketball and soccer, with two to three potential conflicts for both the boys and girls programs, and SOCSD noted that students having to choose between competing sports and academic options happens every semester.
Other benefits advocate cite for the change are better coordinating of the schedule of the practice field since fewer Scorpion sports are in the winter since soccer isn’t overlapping with football and cross country and club soccer play is in the fall, allowing for more field time for those students.
Girls Head Coach Galen Bessette told the NEWS that he has “cautious optimism” about the change, while Boys Head Coach Gavin Shippen said his personal preference was “close to 50/50” between the two seasons, but he narrowly favored “keeping it where it was.”
“My main hope is that by playing in the winter our games are going to be earlier” with less time on the road, Bessette said. “If we’re playing against a bunch of Phoenix area schools, generally, that’s going to be somewhat closer than, say, Blue Ridge. The kids tend to [not] have a good game on a long drive. It keeps them out late, it impacts the next day. So either they skip practice altogether because they’re tired, or they show up and burnt out.
“Whatever happens, I’ll roll with it. But … I’m hoping that that’s going to lead to some better habits and a better lifestyle for the team in general.”
“The competition just got a whole lot better,” Shippen said. “There were a handful of games that we played last season where we won 10-0 and we really just had to handicap ourselves, and it wasn’t necessarily productive for either team.”
Among the cons against moving to winter cited by the coaches and administration are greater risk of weather-related cancellation and discomfort for families about changing established schedules.
“It’s a two-year cycle,” Swaninger said during the meeting. “It doesn’t need to be forever and all ways,” adding that SOCSD will evaluate the effectiveness of the change.
