Frontier landscape changing

The Frontier Conference has been rapidly changing in recent years. More schools are adding additional sports, specifically, soccer, track and field, softball and cross country.

In fact, just a decade ago, none of the Montana members of the Frontier offered any of those sports. Now, several of the league schools offer multiple Olympic sports, with Montana State University-Northern becoming the most recent school to add a new sport as Northern will compete in cross country starting this fall.

However, while the addition of sports seems to be all the rage in the Frontier, addition and subtraction is also part of the equation when it comes to the league’s schools.

In a recent expansion, the league added Dickinson State University as a full-fledged member of the league, while Southern Oregon and the College of Idaho became football-only members three years ago. However, DSU bolted from the Frontier after just two years in the league, instead opting to be the cornerstone of the newly formed Northstar Athletic Association.

While DSU’s departure upset the league’s football schedule to a degree, the Frontier’s volleyball and basketball schedules pretty much went back to normal during the 2014-15 season.

Now however, it’s those three sports that have been thrown into a little upheaval as a result of the latest school to leave the Frontier Conference.

At the conclusion of the spring sports season in May, Westminster College left the Frontier for a move up to NCAA Division II. Westminster is now in year one of its four-year transition to the NCAA and the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. And though the school was not an original member of the Frontier, it was certainly one of its strongest over the last two decades, and the Griffins’ departure from the Frontier has once again altered the landscape of the league.

In men’s and women’s basketball in particular, the league will have a totally different look to it this coming winter. In a hotly debated decision, the league decided to go the route of each team playing each other three times rather than the normal home and away each season. Other alternatives to the scheduling issue included teams continuing to play each other twice per season, but not only would that plan have shortened the Frontier’s season significantly, but it also would have left programs scrambling this past spring to add non-conference games to get up to the recommended 30 total games by the NAIA. And as hard as it has been for the Montana schools to get non-conference games in their home gyms, that alternative seemed too daunting, at least on somewhat short notice.

"With regards to conference games, our men's and women’s schedule definitely takes on a different look next year,” said veteran Northern head men’s coach Shawn Huse. “It is not easy to find a perfectly equal, simple solution when the number of teams has changed from an even number of eight, to an odd number of seven. As a league of basketball coaches, we all wanted something where we do not beat each other up too bad, yet does not leave us with even more non-conference games to find. Three games versus each other was the middle ground we went with. It will probably be something that gets revisited after we do the two-year cycle, but for now it is what it is and everyone will be playing it. Thus we feel our chances at ending on top are just as good as everyone else's with regards to that format. It should not provide any real advantage or disadvantage to any of our teams.”

Another alternative was to return the Frontier to its original schedule when there were no out-of-state teams, and Montana State-Billings, formerly Eastern Montana College, was still a member of the conference. That schedule was for teams to play each other four times per year, on back-to-back nights. In the 1980’s, that format was widely popular, and in Havre, the Armory Gymnasium would be packed full to watch the Lights and Skylights battle foes like Rocky Mountain College and Carroll College two nights in a row. However, that schedule would be difficult on the league’s last out-of-state member in all athletics — Lewis-Clark State College, and it would have also altered the non-conference schedule in various ways.

So, for the foreseeable future, the league will see its basketball members playing three times a year, which means, twice, certain schools will travel to other schools, while only hosting that school once in a season. In Northern’s case, this winter will see the MSU-N basketball teams travel to RMC and UM-Western twice, while hosting all of the other Frontier members twice. In the case of volleyball, the league decided to keep its home-and-away schedule, and play a 12-match season. That left the league’s volleyball members to add an additional non-conference tournament, and also keep its annual bye week in the middle of the conference season, something that has worked well for the volleyball playing schools in the Frontier.

And while the basketball schedule is most hurt by the departure of Westminster, and football has a strong balance of in-state and out-of-state teams right now, there is still a major elephant in the room, and that is the fate of Carroll College.

From an athletics standpoint, Carroll is the pinnacle of the Frontier, especially in football. However, the Great Northwest Athletic Conference, where MSU-B resides, has been courting Carroll for some time now, and in February 2014, then Carroll AD Bruce Parker was quoted in the Helena Independent Record as saying: “Carroll College is constantly evaluating what is best for our institution in all regards — academically, athletically and beyond. In regards to athletics, we have received a letter of encouragement and support from the commissioner of the Great Northwest Athletic Conference. We are in the exploratory phase in collecting and reviewing information both internally and externally to help better evaluate where we belong. Carroll College is exercising its due diligence in all facets of this process.

“We feel that the GNAC boasts an exemplary collection of schools and are flattered by their interest in our institution. At this time we are purely interested in taking time to examine how our affiliations align with our strategic plans.”

Parker eventually left Carroll to assume the same position at RMC, and Carroll just recently lost his replacement to Boise State. However, there is no doubt that the school is likely still exploring its options, and if it were to also bolt for NCAA DII, the league would be left in not only another scheduling quirk, but also without ones of its most visible and prestigious institutions, both academically and athletically.

Nevertheless, for the present time, Carroll is still a Frontier and NAIA power, but make no mistake, the Frontier continues to evolve and change, and nowhere will that be more evident than on the basketball court this winter when Westminster is noticeably absent.