There will come a time when school merger talks in Chautauqua County schools will involve more than sports teams.

It’s not a matter of it, it’s a matter of when. The timing really depends on when our population decline finally bottoms out and we have a better handle on how many schools we need and where they need to be. Whenever that time finally does come, the only thing that we can say with any certainty is it’s not going to be a pretty process.

We’ve known that for some time, but meetings over the past few weeks involving the Southwestern and Frewsburg school districts’ proposal to share fall sports just further drives the point home that we’re in for a bumpy ride when the eventual school merger talks we know are coming finally happen.

Frewsburg and Southwestern officials, to their credit, handled the situation well. They see the participation numbers declining for many of their sports teams and want to find a way to field teams so their students have the opportunity to play. They engaged the public when they had enough information to do so and held a series of public meetings in addition to their board meetings to get public opinion.

The mergers – most of which will move forward for at least the next fall sports season – are not being warmly received. Some parents say the process was too rushed. Others say the districts manipulated the data they used to propose the mergers in the first place. Some fear lack of opportunity for their children to play on a merger team, preferring a smaller team that guarantees the opportunity for playing time. The arguments obscure the bigger fact that is incontrovertible – the overall population of students taking part in athletics is decreasing.

One would hope that the more we go through these sports merger processes we’d get better at it. These are pre-season games for the more important discussions to come in future years – and we’re treating it like the Super Bowl instead of the warm-up act that it truly is. We know that eventually we will have to merge schools. The day is coming. Look at Warren County if you need more proof. The trend of declining population and rising costs caught up with Sheffield and Youngsville high schools. It will happen here.

If the past few weeks at Southwestern and Frewsburg have taught us anything, it’s that we need more preseason games when it comes to mergers, because we’re not yet ready for the regular season, much less a Super Bowl.