The placement of four Classic Lake Conference schools into the Lake Conference cleared another hurdle Monday when a hearing officer designated by the Minnesota State High School League denied appeals by Hopkins and Wayzata. An MSHSL committee had recommended that those schools, along with Edina and Minnetonka, be placed into the Lake Conference beginning with the 2010-11 school year, and now that outcome seems all but assured.

The Lake Conference will also lose two members in 2010-11, because Chaska and Chanhassen have been accepted into the Missota Conference.

In their appeals, Hopkins and Wayzata said they would rather go to the Northwest Suburban Conference. Those appeals were heard by retired district court judge Duane Harves last week and no further appeals will be allowed.

“Like we’ve said the whole time, we’re just glad to be part of a conference,” Hopkins athletic director Dan Johnson said. “We thought it might be a better fit for us to go north than south, but this is fine for us and we’re glad to be part of the Lake Conference. I think the process was fair and followed with as much respect and professionalism as there could have been.”

The MSHSL board of directors had been scheduled to finalize the placement during its regularly scheduled Aug. 11 meeting at Ruttger’s Bay Lake Conference Center near Deerwood. But a special meeting has been set for Aug. 25 at MSHSL headquarters in Brooklyn Center, allowing interested parties to attend without driving to Deerwood. Conference placement will be the only item on the Aug. 25 agenda.

By statute, conferences must have at least five members. The placement process began last fall when Edina, Hopkins, Minnetonka and Wayzata voted to dismiss Armstrong from the Classic Lake and disband the league at the end of 2009-10. Armstrong has been accepted into the Northwest Suburban for 2010-11. The other four Classic Lake schools applied to join the Lake and Northwest Suburban; when those applications were denied, the placement committee was formed.

If the MSHSL board finalizes the placement of the four schools into the Lake Conference, the future of the Lake will become the focus. Lake officials, saying they would have accepted one or two Classic Lake schools, have threatened to break up the league if all four schools were placed into it.

Lake officials have warned that nine of the remaining 10 Lake schools – Apple Valley, Bloomington Jefferson, Bloomington Kennedy, Burnsville, Eagan, Eastview, Lakeville North, Lakeville South and Rosemount – might withdraw from the Lake and form a new league. If that happened, the only remaining Lake school would be Eden Prairie, which would find itself in a five-school conference with Edina, Hopkins, Minnetonka and Wayzata.

Late Monday update …

I spoke this evening with Bloomington Jefferson principal Steve Hill, who is chairman of the Lake Conference executive committee. He said he was disappointed by today’s developments, and he holds out “one slice of hope” that the MSHSL board of directors might not abide by the placement committee decisions and the hearing officer’s agreement with those decisions.

“It appears the handwriting is on the wall,” Hill said. “If all four Classic Lake Conference teams are indeed placed in the Lake Conference, I anticipate that after the Aug. 25 board of directors meeting, there will be some conversations where discussion of schools leaving the Lake Conference would take place.”

With that, I will take the advice of Obamanation (see comments below) and resume my vacation. See you in August.

John Millea is on Twitter at www.twitter.com/stribjohn�

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