The three days spanning Feb. 29 through March 2 should have been highly embarrassing for the administrators from Montana’s Class AA high schools.

They should have been ashamed to show their faces after that. However, they apparently do not feel the appropriate shame.

Feb. 29 through March 2 was the weekend of the Western AA and Eastern AA Divisional basketball tournaments, and the Class AA totally got outclassed by the Class A.

That was middle of three straight weekends of basketball tournaments at the Butte Civic Center. It started with the Western A Divisional. Next was the Western AA Divisional, which was followed by the Class A State to tournament.

Two of the tournaments were packed with excitement from the opening whistle on Thursday morning until the final buzzer on Saturday night. The other one was the Class AA tournament, and it was largely a snoozefest.

The Class A tournaments had an electric atmosphere. Most of the schools brought their bands and cheerleaders, and they had great student sections.

Each game featured a halftime show to entertain the crowd.

At the Class AA tournament, the halftime performance was watching the old guys sweep the floor and counting how many people peppered them with jokes about not being as fast as Tate Hakala.

Oh, the basketball was good, and the atmosphere was fun when Butte High played. Other than that, though, all we had was stands slightly filled with parents.

It really felt more like a travel tournament than a high school event.

This, of course, is 100 percent the fault of the Class AA administrators. They purposely sabotaged the divisional tournaments.

On the surface, that might sound like a ridiculous accusation. Hear me out, though.

The Class AA finally agreed to go back to divisional tournaments for the first time since 1990 following the 2017-18 season. Chuck Merrifield, Butte High’s activities director, finally wore his colleges down.

For years, Merrifield had been pushing to move back to divisional tournaments because he is the rarest of breeds of Class AA administrators. He actually gets what sports are all about.

Chuck knew that the Class AA athletes were getting the shaft for nearly 30 years. He knew that some schools went more than a decade without playing in a tournament at all.

Year after year, Chuck brought up divisional tournaments. Year after year, they shut him down.

He did not change his argument as he brought up the cause each year. Apparently, he just wore them down and got them to bring back divisional tournaments at the end of the 2017-18 season.

But the rest of the administrators made sure it was never done right.

First, they implemented a rule that the tournaments could not be played in arenas — like the Four Seasons in Great Falls, the Adams Center in Missoula, the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse in Bozeman, the Metra in Billings or the Butte Civic Center.

Rather, they had to be played in smaller high school gyms or college gyms.

The Eastern AA Divisional made its debut in Butte in 2018. The boys played at the Richardson Gym at Butte High, and the girls played at Montana Tech. In several instances, the boys and girls from the same school were playing at the same time in gyms across town.

This year’s Western AA Divisional at the Civic Center was the only one of the divisional tournaments in seven years to be played in an arena. The Eastern AA was played at MSU-Billings, while a Class B divisional was played at the Metra.

Oh, and they made a rule where only the home teams could have a band and cheerleaders at the tournaments. They didn’t realize that the tournaments are about all the school’s students. Or, more likely, they don’t care.

“They did everything in their power to make it half-assed and cheap,” said Butte High graduate Luke Powers, who recently resigned as head coach after four years leading the boys’ team in Belgrade.

As bad as they tried to make the tournament experience, at least the boys and girls had a fighting chance on the court. Until now.

Recently, the shortsighted Class AA administrators decided to scrap divisionals for basketball and volleyball. They decided to reduce the number of teams in the State softball tournament from 12 to eight.

Powers was the coach of the Butte High boys’ basketball team from 2015-16 through 2018-19, and he helped Merrifield fight for divisional tournaments. He absolutely despises this decision. He said it was the final straw in his decision to step away from coaching.

“To me, it’s not about the kids,” Powers said. “It’s about going through the motions to get it over with. It’s a terrible decision, and it’s bad for kids.”

Powers isn’t the only coach who wanted to keep divisional tournaments. He said when the girls’ and boys’ coaches of the 16 Class AA schools were given the choice to get rid of the tournaments, they voted 32-0 in favor of keeping them.

Yes, 32-0. That is a vote that even Rudy Giuliani could get behind. Not the Class AA administrators, though.

They voted to go against the coaches and against the student-athletes. Merrifield was the only AD to vote to keep the tournaments. Again, because he gets it.

The No. 1 reason these administrators give for the decision is money.

Yes, money is tight. It is a shame that some school districts are cutting back on teachers as mill levies fail around the state.

Still, it is rich to hear administrators with six-figure salaries use money as a reason to take something away from student-athletes. With a little bit of work, those administrators could probably come up with enough sponsorship money to pay for the tournaments in a week or less.

So, excuse me for not buying the money excuse. Plus, money does not seem to be an obstacle for the Class A, B or C.

“That’s a poor excuse from people who don’t want to deal with that weekend,” Powers said of the money justification. “The only administrator who really wanted to work at that and make it a great experience is Chuck.”

More than anything, the divisional tournaments give all the teams a fighting chance, and that is what sports is all about.

Next year, the bottom four teams in the Class AA won’t even get a chance to play in a playoff game. Really, what the heck are we doing here?

“You want a chance,” said Powers, whose No. 8 seeded Panthers beat No. 1 seed Bozeman in the Eastern AA Divisional a couple of years ago. “You want to a chance to improve every year because you aren’t always blessed with talent. That’s motivating.

“To take away that chance to be a Cinderella is just absurd. The system that we got rid of because it was (bad) is coming back, but we made it (worse).”

Like with basketball and volleyball, the reason they give us to cut back in softball is money. But we know better. We know they just want to get it over with.

While players, coaches and fans look forward to the postseason, the Class AA administrators apparently view it like an appointment for a root canal.  

These are, after all, the same people who used class time as an excuse for avoiding divisional tournaments all these years. Then, they scheduled a large portion of the basketball games for Tuesday and Thursday nights so they can have weekends off.

When the divisional tournaments came back in 2018, the administrators dropped the regular-season from 20 to 18 games. Now that they dropped the divisionals, they are only adding one more game back to the season.

So, while they are adding to football and wrestling, they are taking away from basketball, volleyball and softball.

It sure sounds like we need some kind of class-action lawsuit on behalf of the Class AA student-athletes. Could a sports-minded lawyer please pick up the white courtesy phone?

That Class AA administrators are hurting the games, and they are limiting scholarship opportunities for the student-athletes. So, a lawsuit might be the only way we can get their attention.

As last Feb. 29 through March 2 clearly shows, embarrassment just will not work on these people.

— Bill Foley, who is not a lawyer, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74. Listen to him on the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.