Let’s assume Tomah High School were realigned into the Scenic Bluffs Conference and won conference championships in football, volleyball, boys and girls basketball, wrestling, baseball, softball and boys and girls track & field. I suppose there would be lots of congratulatory dialogue about the dedication and hard work that led Tomah to all these titles.

It would, of course, be a crock. Tomah would win these titles because it has four times more students than any other team in the Scenic Bluffs. It would be like La Crosse Aquinas blowing through Division 3 at tournament time.

By now, it should be absolutely clear that the WIAA’s post-season alignment, revamped in the wake of the WIAA absorbing private schools after WISAA disbanded, doesn’t work. Aquinas, a private Catholic school, is Exhibit A.

Consider Aquinas’ astonishing post-season success. During the 2007-08 season, the Blugolds reached the state tournament in the following sports: boys cross country (state champion), girls cross country, boys basketball (state champion), baseball (state runner-up), softball (state runner-up) and boys tennis.

That’s six state tournaments. It would have been seven had Aquinas not lost a 3-2 girls soccer shootout in the sectional final.

The list doesn’t include football, where Aquinas won a state championship in Division 5 (there are seven divisions). Tomah, which defeated Aquinas, 34-31, for the Mississippi Valley Conference championship, reached the football playoffs in Division 2.

There’s no doubt that Aquinas has quality coaches and quality athletes, but at what point do we acknowledge that Aquinas isn’t playing comparable schools with comparable enrollment profiles in the post-season?

Aquinas didn’t just win some sectionals, it destroyed opponent after opponent in ridiculous mismatches. In the football playoffs, Aquinas beat five teams by a 162-33 margin. The softball team didn’t allow a run in five sectional games and scored 31 runs. The baseball team won its four sectional games by scores of 14-3, 8-3, 14-2 and 14-4.

And then there’s boys basketball. Aquinas’ march to the state tournament included the following victims: Necedah (85-26), Whitehall (74-43), Arcadia (62-36), Pardeeville (66-37) and Cuba City (64-35).

With 357 students, Aquinas is assigned to Division 3 and is one of the largest Division 3 schools (Necedah, for example, has 278 students; Cuba City has 272). Unfortunately, the cutoff problem can’t be avoided. No matter where the cutoff exists, there will always be a smallest school in Division 2, a largest school in Division 3, and so on.

What can be mitigated, however, is the undeniable difference between schools that charge tuition and those that don’t. A public school of 357 students doesn’t have the same student profile as a private school of 357, and it’s unrealistic to expect the former to compete with the latter on a consistent basis.

Public schools take everyone. Their student bodies include highly motivated students, but they also include the pot smokers, the beer drinkers, the unmotivated and those who live 15 miles from campus and can’t afford the extra transportation bill. All of them count when a public school’s enrollment is determined by the WIAA.

Private schools don’t take everyone. They are stocked with students from families where parents have both the affluence and motivation necessary to pay tuition. That means a higher percentage of students who seek to excel in both the classroom and in extracurricular activities. (Such students tend to be the same people; the dumb jock stereotype is not only insulting, it’s demonstrably false.) It leaves private schools with a larger base of students inclined to participate in extracurriculars, and the gap is exacerbated by extracurricular participation fees charged by more and more public schools.

There’s nothing nefarious about a private school’s inherent enrollment profile advantage, and it has nothing to do with sport-specific recruiting. Perhaps recruiting does happen in high-profile sports like basketball, but does anyone really believe that recruiting juiced Aquinas in cross country or softball? Success in those sports is the result of an athletic program that simply drew from a deeper pool of athletes than their public school opponents.

What’s the solution? An enrollment mulitiplier. Just multiply the enrollment of any school that charges tuition by 1.5. For Aquinas, its enrollment for post-season placement would rise from 357 to 535. Instantly, Aquinas would face more comparable teams at tournament time.

The adjustment has already been made in conference alignment. When Aquinas left the Central Wisconsin Catholic Conference, it didn’t go to the Coulee Conference, where enrollments ranged from 300 to 600; it entered the Mississippi Valley Conference, where enrollments ranged from 800 to 1,300. Aquinas has been a wonderful addition to the MVC. It plays competitive games with every school, and while the competitive gaps in individual sports vary from season to season, those gaps have evened out over time. Aquinas has a very appropriate home in the MVC.

It’s time to apply those standards to the post-season. Aquinas has no business playing Necedah, and interscholastic high school competition doesn’t benefit from an 85-26 tournament basketball game. The fix is out there. It’s time for the WIAA to use it.

Steve Rundio is sports editor of Tomah Newspapers.