How many high school classifications does your state have?

I was never that high on the OSAA. I remember one year when La Grande had to make a 600-mile (one-way) drive to Brookings for the play-in round of the basketball state tournament ... absurd doesn't begin to describe it.

 

Michigan does not have a separate body for private schools, so everyone fights it out the same way.

In some sports (hockey comes to mind), it's not exactly a level playing field, but several of the state's dominant football programs (East Grand Rapids, Rockford, Muskegon, etc.) are public. In the era of the current system (1999-present), there has been only one private-private title game in D8 (2002) and just five total (of a possible 96).

 

In our part of the state, it's a mixed bag. Our three public schools in Klamath Falls are in the same league for the first time, which makes those games much more exciting and meaningful. Our five 1A schools are the same as always.

On the flip side, we have a school 90 miles east (which buys plenty of papers) that was 3A size but, due to geographical issues, allowed to play 2A. Now that enough schools 175 miles away (instead of 275 or so) are 3A, it's our only school in that league. We try to catch it when it plays any of our three 2A schools, each of which are within about a half-hour, but it's kind of been put on the back burner.

 

Mississippi has two associations, the MHSAA, which is all of the public schools plus parochial schools and a couple of private schools that have joined in the last couple of years, and the MAIS, which is the academies and other private schools. I won't go into the history of how that division came about, but it's not pretty. FWIW, the MHSAA has about 94 percent of the state's high school students.

The MHSAA has six classes for most sports. The 32 largest schools are 6A, the next 32 largest are 5A and the rest are divided more or less equally among the four lower classes (about 48 schools in each class). Soccer combines all of the 3A and smaller schools into one class, and a couple of girls sports (volleyball and powerlifting) are in a three-class system (I, II, III). Swimming is all one class.

Personally, I think that's two classes too many for a state of this size, but it does mean most of the schools in each class are fairly close in size, which cuts down on complaints of schools having to play other schools in their class that are more than twice their size, which was the case in the old five-class system.

The MAIS has three classes for most sports, plus they've started playing 8-man football, which is a separate group. Class AAA in football is also divided into two divisions, with about 12 teams each. It's a bogus system, but was put in because the smaller AAA schools got tired of getting their asses kicked by Jackson Prep and Jackson Academy every year in postseason. A few sports (soccer and softball) have a two-division system. The MAIS also has a very popular Overall basketball tournament which takes the top three teams from each class tournament.

 

Perhaps an important note to the Kansas system; you guys can be the judge. Leagues are still very important here and that goes for all sports. The main school in our coverage area has been in the same league since 1927 and membership has only changed twice (a new school joined in 1968 and one was in temporarily from 87-91). And classes and leagues do not go hand-in-hand. The main school is a 4A school and eight of the nine schools are 4A with one being in 5A. Topeka Hayden is a 4A in a league with 6A and 5A schools.

A few years ago, the main school was scheduled to play a team from Arkansas in the first round of a pre-season basketball tournament. I called the AD of the Arkansas school to learn a little about his school's team and we ended up talking about how our states do things. He was as astounded by Kansas' system as I was about Arkansas'.

 

We do that in Indiana. It sucks.

Classes 2A and A should be combined -- there is next to no competitive difference between them. Class 4A should be split up -- the schools down at the bottom end (about 1,100 enrollment) don't have anywhere near the horses to consistently compete with the schools with 4,500+ enrollment at the top of the class. There is something like a spread of 3,700 students in Class 4A, a spread of 500 from top to bottom in 3A, 300 from top to bottom in 2A and 1A. We have about 100 schools in each class.

It's a simple admission that there are more small schools than big schools, and you'll find that coaches would rather play in a tournament where they'd have to win seven games but have a decent shot than run the risk of being tossed in with 3,000+ enrollment schools and have little chance of winning a game, which is what we have here.

Indiana has four classes in all sports except football (5) and soccer (2). Individual sports -- ALL sports where individual state champs are named, such as track/tennis/gymnastics/CC/golf/wrestling -- are still single-class. I like the simplicity of the individual being single class. If you can run the 100 meters fast, it doesn't matter what size school you go to (and yeah, I know, training methods and everything, but as we all know, the private schools would just turn any lower-class meet into their own little invitational and you'd have the same imbalance).

Football's five classes have 63-64 teams in each, and everyone makes the tournament, so you have a pretty good idea who you'll be facing in the opening rounds. With rare exceptions, it basically becomes a parochial school invitational in Classes 4A-A, because no multiplier/adjustment is made for their enrollments. Basketball is becoming that way -- only two of the six state finalists in boys basketball this year in Classes A-3A were public schools -- and one of those was a team that included 7-foot Indiana signee and Mr. Basketball Cody Zeller.

 

A lot of the time teams end up playing a conference rival in the early rounds, so scouting is taken care of by the fact that they played that team earlier in the season. After Divisions are drawn up, they are further divided into geographic regions and seeded from there.
I was working in Michigan when the current system was introduced and I was skeptical at first, but it seemed to work just fine. Under the old system, strength of schedule was a huge part of the playoff points, so if your conference was having a down year, you could go 7-2 and be out of the playoffs while a 4-5 team was in.

 

That would make sense. In my part of the state we have a lot of A and 2A schools who play each other in the regular season and there isn't much of a competitive imbalance. I think in girls hoops especially, either of the A finalists would have had a nice tourney run in 2A.

 

Correct. The brackets remain influenced by geography through several rounds. A Division 8 team from here in the U.P. would almost certainly not get a downstate team until at least round 3 and not one from the southern half of the LP until the semifinals.

 

I haven't read through to see if anybody has yet brought this up, but this isn't entirely true. Class 3A still only takes three teams per district. Though that may change soon.

 

Texas' high school system works with few complaints from me on almost every level... except for football, oddly enough. It's 1A (small schools) to 5A in just about every sport (swimming, tennis and soccer are the only I can think of that only have 4A and 5A), with one playoff bracket for each classification. But football crowns 10 champs every year, splitting them off into DI and DII for the playoffs, DI schools largely having bigger enrollment. Having been to a few football state title games, DI winners would usually mop the floor with DII teams (Daingerfield vs. Idalou? Please), but there's this pervasive "give everyone a chance" mindset that's hard to shake at the high school level. There's been some talk of a plus-one game, but I doubt there's any traction to it. I think too many teams make the playoffs, but that's par for the course in most states. But crowning two 1A, 2A, 3A, 4A and 5A champs is dumb.

Some 1A schools have six-man programs, and below 1A there's TAPPS and TCAL (private schools). Literally never heard of eight or nine-man football before though. Seems odd.