Our View: The Wichitan staff believe that conference changes may cause trouble for student athletes.

President Suzanne Shipley said, “The athletic changes are that our Lone Star Conference is doubling in size.”

With the Lone Star Conference adding seven teams for next years line-up, student athletes are preparing to have plenty of traveling games.

This will make it harder on some teams. Softball in particular will have almost double the amount of away games as they had this year.

Mark Ryal, head softball coach, said, “We had five trips this year and next year you are looking at possibly nine to 10 trips.”

Because of these trips students will be missing more school and will have to try and keep up with course work outside of class.

“You’re going to ask your team to play a doubleheader on Sunday, you will pull out of there at seven o’clock at night,” Ryal said. “Now you are going to have 10 to 11-hour drive coming back on Sunday night so they won’t get here until Monday morning at 5 a.m.”

For softball some of the teams being added are teams they see at tournaments like the one at Oklahoma Christian University.

There could be a silver lining to adding seven teams into the Lone Star Conference. This could give the teams the wins that they want or need to make it.