The Suburban Council is growing.
The league’s 12 high school principals voted to admit four former Big 10 schools for the 2015-16 school sports season – Albany, Schenectady, Troy and Christian Brothers Academy. All four schools are playing as independents this season following the dissolution of the Big 10 last year.
Three of the Suburban Council’s basketball coaches – Bethlehem boys coach A.G. Irons, Bethlehem girls coach Matt Bixby and Shaker girls coach Emily Caschera-Bowles – all said they were looking forward to having the four former Big 10 schools join the league.
“I think this is a positive for Suburban Council teams because now, we’ll have the advantage of seeing these (former) Big 10 teams at least once a year,” said Irons.
“It’s going to be like coaching and playing in the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference),” said Bixby. “Any time we can play great competition, I’m excited for that, and adding the teams that we’re adding is bringing more competition. It solidifies our league as probably the strongest league in New York state.”
“I think it’s an exciting time for girls basketball,” said Caschera-Bowles. “The Suburban Council is more competitive this year than last year, and more competitive than the year before that.”
What this means going forward for the league remains unclear. It must decide how to incorporate its four new members – whether to place them in the current two-division structure of North and South divisions, or to create new divisions. Then, there will be the matter of scheduling games so that each school can play most or all of its league opponents.
Irons said he’s hoping the New York State Public High School Athletic Association will increase the number of regular season games teams can play so the Suburban Council can offer its 16 member schools the opportunity to not only play everyone else in the league, but also have non-league games.
“My understanding is that with the additions, we’ll be at 18 games, and rumor has it that the state is going to increase its total to 20 or 22 games,” said Irons.
There will be an added wrinkle for the league to consider when scheduling girls games. Since CBA is an all-male school, there will only be 15 member schools offering girls teams in many sports. This creates a situation where one school will a bye day.
“That’s the ADs (athletic directors) problems. They’ve got to figure that out,” said Caschera-Bowles.
Bixby said he doesn’t see the possibility of having a bye day during the season as a problem for his basketball team.
“We deal with that kind of stuff all year between the Christmas break and February break and midterm week. We deal with those breaks all the time. So, these kids are very accustomed to that by now,” said Bixby.
