SECIS football event moving from Cramton Bowl to West Georgia

The SECIS Kickoff Classic originated in Montgomery in 2016 and featured private school teams from across the southeast. But city officials have shown little or no interest in the event returning, causing the SECIS to move elsewhere. (File Photo)

By TIM GAYLE 

The fifth Southeastern Commission of Independent Schools’ Kickoff Classic will be played in August of this year, but it will not at Cramton Bowl.

Add the SECIS event to a growing list of sporting events that are pulling out of the Capital City and not being replaced as a new group of city officials show a lack of interest in attracting or keeping sporting events. 

SECIS officials announced back in 2020, when the event was suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic, that it wasn’t scheduled to return to Montgomery because of the disinterest shown by city officials, but apparently no one in city government stepped forward over the past two years to offer any encouragement.

As Oxford officials learned in luring away the Alabama High School Athletic Association softball and baseball championships, Montgomery’s lack of interest certainly will be countered by other cities eager to host sporting events.  

Formed in January, 2016, the Southeastern Commission of Independent Schools is an academic and athletic collaboration of the Alabama Independent School Association, the Georgia Independent School Association, the Midsouth Association of Independent Schools and the South Carolina Independent School Association. The organization held its first sports event in the spring of 2016 with a golf tournament, then included football in the fall of 2016.

The SECIS Kickoff Classic was a popular event among the four private school organizations and had been held every year since the organization’s inception in Cramton Bowl until COVID-19 suspended the event in 2020 and 2021.

This year’s event will be hosted by the University of West Georgia at Carrollton, Ga.  

“I think (SECIS officials) were working with a couple of different facilities,” AISA executive director Michael McLendon said. “They wanted the event. I think they also talked with Samford and some other facilities in Georgia. The University of West Georgia wanted it on their campus.”

The event will be moved back a week to Week Zero (Aug. 19-20) and will be part of the participants’ regular-season schedule. In the past, it was held a week earlier and was an addition to each team’s schedule. 

“We haven’t settled on our two schools participating at this time,” McLendon said. “First, we’ll see how our (AISA) scheduling settles out.”

The event started with two schools from each organization as part of an eight-team, two-day format, but then expanded to 12 teams in 2017, cut back to eight in 2018 and expanded to 10 in 2019.

SECIS officials, comprised of the athletic directors and executive directors of the four organizations, also used the reset to discuss more scheduling among the private school organizations, although games between AISA and GISA schools, which are on the same classification system (2022-23 and 2023-24), are easier to schedule than AISA and MAIS (2021-22 and 2022-23) schools. 

“We’re working with the other state associations, working together to create more non-conference play with each other,” McLendon said. “That’s exciting, to see some new names in the mix.”

While SECIS officials have discussed other sports that have built-in obstacles -- such as softball, which is a spring sport in some states, a fall sport in others -- the only two that have been played are football and golf. 

The SECIS Golf Classic will resume in 2022 after a two-year COVID-19 layoff as well, set for Mossy Oak Golf Club in West Point, Miss., and hosted by MAIS officials. This year’s event will vary in format. The first four years, the event featured an all-star team, with AISA officials sending the top five returning players from the previous year’s state golf tournament.

“It’s going to be a little different,” McLendon said. “We have a school, Glenwood, participting in it. It’s no longer an all-star event. We’ll have one team participating in it this year and then eventually we hope to convert it to multiple teams from each state.”

McLendon said the change of format was necessary “because of the time of year, it’s going to coincide with different spring breaks, trying to get multiple teams on the same schedule. This is going to be a test run this year and we’ll just grow from there.” 

Previously, the golf tournament had been hosted by GISA officials at Callaway Gardens and in 2019 at St. Simons Island. This will be the first SECIS event hosted by Midsouth Association of Independent Schools, which includes private schools in Mississippi as well as 16 in Louisiana, four in Arkansas and two in Tennessee.