Sweeping Class C realignment accomplished with 'larger good of the classification' in mind

HELENA — When Class C administrators started working on one of the largest realignment projects in classification history, it took some time to get everyone on the same page.

“I think when you know Class C, you know most of it’s contentious,” said Brian Michelotti, the executive director of the Montana High School Association. “There is some give and take in there, and especially through northcentral Montana.

“And then at the final part, there’s some schools over on the western side that wanted to go one way or the other, and they kind of compromised a little bit, too. But it was a classic situation where they really came together.”

In the end, Montana’s smallest schools made sweeping changes to their divisions, consistently aligning them in basketball, volleyball and track and field. Gone are the days of some schools participating in different divisions depending on the sport.

“The thing that was in place prior to the realignment was our sports weren’t aligned completely across the divisions, so, for instance, our volleyball divisions statewide were different than our basketball and track divisions,” said Kara Triplett, who is the vice president and Class C representative on the MHSA executive board as well as the activities director for Lambert and Richey, which have competed in an athletic co-op since 2009.

“The reason that was the case was initially when we started volleyball, not all Class C schools had volleyball, and so we had to figure out a different way to align the state with volleyball,” Triplett continued. “Now that volleyball has certainly emerged and most schools are fielding volleyball teams, it was time to put the idea of realigning those three sports out there and trying to get the divisions equal that way.”

To align the new divisions, Triplett worked with other Class C leaders: namely Mike Richards, the Broadus activities director who represented the East division; Greg Sager, the principal and athletic director at Shields Valley who spoke for the West division; Scott Sparks, the superintendent at Denton and president of the South division; and Brian Campbell, the North Star AD and representative for the North division.

Triplett said Richards, the Class C AD of the year, “took the bull by the horns” to give the administrators a starting point. From there, they worked through different scenarios but never considered straying from the classification’s tried-and-true four-division format. The conversation always included East, South, North and West divisions.

Some divisions and schools made large concessions. The North, for example, lost traditional basketball stalwarts like Roy-Winifred, Denton-Geyser-Stanford-Geraldine and Winnett-Grass Range to the South and gained Dodson from the East.

According to Sparks, the new-look South, which also picked up White Sulphur Springs from the West, is bringing back a reimagined District 7C, which 20 years ago included Winnett, Grass Range, Roy, Winifred, Denton, Stanford, Hobson, Moore and Judith Gap featuring nine separate teams in the North. Those nine towns are all now spread across five co-ops, and the new District 7C will be comprised of Winnett-Grass Range, Harlowton-Ryegate-Judith Gap, Hobson-Moore, Roy-Winifred, Denton-Geyser-Stanford-Geraldine and White Sulphur Springs alongside traditional Southern C programs Broadview-Lavina and Melstone in basketball.

District 6C's basketball alignment consists of Absarokee, Bridger-Belfry-Fromberg (girls co-op), Custer-Hysham, Forsyth, Fromberg (boys only), Northern Cheyenne, Park City, Plenty Coups, Reed Point-Rapelje and Roberts, all schools that previously played in the Southern C. Park City is moving back to Class C after competing in Class B last year.

District 4C — which includes Ekalaka, Jordan, Plevna, Broadus, Terry and Wibaux — moved from the South to the East.

2025-26 Class C basketball alignment

Eastern Division

Southern Division

Northern Division

Western Division

View the 2025-26 Class C alignments for: Volleyball | Track and Field. (Note: The alignment documents display District 5C, but Sparks said the division has requested the district be named District 7C.)

“Montana is vast, and we have a large number of Class C schools. We have about an average of 90 schools, and then we have several schools in some co-ops for different sports and things like that,” Triplett said. “And so there’s a lot of communication that had to happen, and there was a lot of compromise that had to happen and basically coming together and just recognizing that for the larger good of the classification, we needed to take this step.”

This past basketball season, there were 15 teams in the East, 18 in the South, 22 in the North and 21 in the West.

Under the new basketball alignment, which was approved at the MHSA's annual meeting in January and will be implemented for the 2025-26 school year, there are 19 teams in the East, 18 in the South, 18 in the North and 19 in the West. The numbers are slightly different in volleyball and track to account for different co-ops, but the schools in each division will remain the same year-round.

The more balanced divisions, Triplett said, should help the classification more easily weather fluctuations if schools must form new co-ops, dissolve existing co-ops or move up to Class B.

“When it all came down to it,” Triplett said, “people were willing to make some sacrifices because they believed in the intent of what we were trying to do.”