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How many high school classifications does your state have?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Johnny Chase, Apr 25, 2011.

  1. dirtybird

    dirtybird Well-Known Member

    Spud - does Texas completely split private/public, or do big, powerhouse privates compete alongside big public schools?
     
  2. BrianGriffin

    BrianGriffin Active Member

    Yeah, I wasn't in Texas long enough for all the little details to seep into the DNA. Now that you mention it, I do seem to recall what you are saying. How exactly did that affect the 3A post-season?
     
  3. Lynn Burke

    Lynn Burke Member

    Virginia starts out with 3 classes, called groups. Group AAA is for the largest schools, Group AA for the mid-sized ones and Group A for the smaller schools. And each of the groups is divided into 4 regions and each of the 4 regions has 2 to 4 districts. During the regular season, everybody plays within their district.

    If it stopped there, it would be easy, however ....

    For football playoffs purposes (and for basketball in AA and A), schools are divided into divisions. AAA schools split into Division 6 and Division 5, AA into divisions 4 and 3, A into divisions 2 and 1. Splits are done on a regional level by enrollment with the top half of the schools in each region in 6, 4 and 2 and the schools with the smaller enrollment are in 5, 3 and 1.

    Because the enrollment splits are on a regional level, you run into situations where a state champion in Division 1 might have a larger enrollment than the Division 2 state champ (happened in boys basketball, I think, 2-3 years ago).

    And because the Virginia High School League lets each group board set up its own structure, in basketball, there is only a Group AAA state championship, but there are Division 4, 3, 2 and 1 state championships for the Group AA and A schools.

    And perhaps somebody else in Virginia can explain this, but next fall, Group A football playoffs will be on a sectional or half-state basis, rather than on a regional basis.
     
  4. BrianGriffin

    BrianGriffin Active Member

    A bill in the Texas legislature would allow private schools in the UIL (the state's high school athletic group) in all sports but football and basketball. There are already two private schools in the UIL in all sports -- Strake Jesuit of Houston and Dallas Jesuit. These schools have heavy restrictions that make it difficult for them to become competitive, much less, dominant.

    By contrast, in Louisiana private schools are in the LHSAA and tend to dominate, particularly the lower classes. I noticed in the baseball playoffs, where we have whittled the fields from 32 to 8, the remaining teams are almost exclusively urban private schools. Small-town public schools cannot compete.
     
  5. spud

    spud Member

    Bi-district byes is all it does, really. Since you're taking an odd-number, each district's top seed gets a bye through to the area round. All our 3A districts are better for it, since fewer go and teams want the bye, but alas, I'm sure parents and a few vocal coaches will win out and get even more teams in the playoffs, further diluting an already diluted field. It's pointless to even pay much attention until the regional quarters.

    As for the private schools thing... I'm a little foggy on all the details, but I know in some sports private schools may be able to compete with the big boys soon enough on top of the two already mentioned. Dallas Jesuit became the first Texas private school to pick up a state title in a UIL event in boys' soccer last year, I do know that. We have a few TAPPS/TCAL schools in our area, though, and I know none of them want a part of UIL in football. It's just a different beast.
     
  6. Smash Williams

    Smash Williams Well-Known Member

    Texas has been pretty well covered, but I'll expand on a few details.

    Six-man is for schools with 100 or fewer students and is subdivided into Division I (60-100 students) and Division II (59 and fewer) students all season. All the other DI and DII splits in football are made once the teams have qualified for the playoffs.

    There are 32 districts per class with 5-10 schools per district. They are the same for every sport except for soccer (with the six-man schools being put in the Class 1A districts) since most of the small schools don't field soccer teams. The districts are drawn by geography, and when you get into the bigger classes, there is a lot of mileage between the big schools. So you end up with five-team districts in West Texas and 10-team districts in the cities, but there's no better way to do it.

    I believe the Jesuits sued to be let into the UIL several years ago with the stipulation that they could not recruit for athletics or any of the other UIL-sanctioned activities. The UIL does not want to open up the recruiting bag of worms especially with the powerhouse schools being giant, publicly-financed beasts.
     
  7. BrianGriffin

    BrianGriffin Active Member

    My opinion is that if they let the privates in, it wouldn't change much. The reason public schools get the players in Texas is not because the private schools can't play in the UIL, but because so much is invested in public school athletics. I mean, I've seen some powerhouse private school programs in other states and believe me, in terms of facilities and how coaches are paid, they pale in comparison to your typical large metro Texas school.
     
  8. joeggernaut

    joeggernaut Member

    Montana is split into four divisions for nearly every sport.

    Football has five divisions, though the bottom two are 8-man and 6-man. Wrestling, softball and tennis have three classes, combining B and C schools for one championship. Soccer has two divisions and swimming only has one division.

    They keep things simple on the dividing front, basing class designation almost entirely on enrollment, though some teams are in a certain class for convenience, keeping them from having to travel hundreds of miles to find an opponent. Each school is in the same division for every sport, so there's no confusion between seasons and a school has to apply to be moved up or down a class. Wrestling hands out a B-C state championship and a C state championship, where theoretically a school can win both.

    With rural schools dwindling in numbers, 56 have fewer than 50 students, most are co-oping to keep sports around, which can be a power struggle between schools deciding which school colors/mascot to use.

    The only weird situation is Class AA. There are only 14 schools, so they have no divisions within the class. To win a state championship, teams have to win the divisional to get into the state championships the week before which is basically just the state championship itself, with a few throwaway teams involved. It seems tedious at times.
     
  9. sctvman

    sctvman New Member

    South Carolina is an interesting state. There are about 200 schools in the SCHSL (South Carolina High School League). Football has six champions, but they are expanding that to 7 for next year, because they had to move away the Weekend of Champions from Williams-Brice Stadium. Now, they are separating the state championships.

    Every level except 3A now has two state championships. All you have to do is win 3 games to go to the state championship. In 4A at least, there's 48 teams. 32 of them make the playoffs.

    In other sports, it differs. Swimming has two championships, one for 4A and one for the rest of the divisions. Golf has two, separated into lower and upper divisions before the state title. Lacrosse is new, so they just have one title for the teams in that.

    Girls' soccer is separated into 3 divisions with 2A and 1A teams in the same division. Cheerleading also has 3, and is the hardest state to make. Only 12-14 teams from each division make it after lower state.

    All sports except softball and baseball are single-elimination. In those sports, you can lose 3 times and still win the state title.

    Most other sports have four classifications. SCISA is a different animal. 48 teams play football in SCISA, with classes of 14, 12, and 10. :(

    Another 12 or 13 teams play 8-man football. 69 schools play in all sports. Basketball has six classes for 69 schools. Kind of crazy. The other sports are all mixed.
     
  10. smith_kb

    smith_kb New Member

    When I was in Arkansas, we had 7 classification for all HS Sports 1A-7A.

    Now that I'm in Texas there are too many to count. Last I heard we were approaching 9A???

    The Districts are what get me. You have all those classifications and then 30+ districts per classification.
     
  11. Football_Bat

    Football_Bat Well-Known Member

    To clarify the division splits in Texas ... in 2008, six-man football was aligned into Division I and II districts for the first time, and in 2010, 1A and 2A eleven-man football followed suit. So you have Division I districts and Division II districts.

    There's been discussion about doing the same in the future for 3A through 5A but the superintendents, who vote to decide these things, are against it. So 3A through 5A do it the old way, with the largest playoff qualifiers in each district going into the Division I (big school) bracket and the smallest ones going Division II.

    Football is the only sport where you have a divisional split within classes, with one exception. Class 1A basketball is split because of the huge number of these schools in the state; Division I corresponds roughly with 1A 11-man football and Division II with the six-man schools.

    Soccer only has two classes, 4A and 5A, but more and more 3A schools are adding soccer and competing in 4A right now, so there's a likelihood the UIL will add 3A soccer in the coming decade.

    I like the UIL system for the most part. The results on the field determine your fate and no computers are needed. The playoff brackets follow a logical pattern. The one thing I don't like about it is how drawn-out the baseball and softball playoffs are -- one round per week, which pushes the championships well into June. Two-a-days begin six weeks later, which squeezes our vacation window.
     
  12. BrianGriffin

    BrianGriffin Active Member

    Louisiana uses power ratings to determine the football playoff brackets. I think Texas can learn from this. In Louisiana, the only team in a district guaranteed to make the playoffs is the champion. Everything else is determined by power ratings, which is based on a mathematical formula all teams are aware of before the season (it takes your number of wins and the number of wins on you opponents and it rewards you for wins playing "up" to higher classes, but does not penalize you for playing "down" to lower classes).

    Texas is too big to do this state wide, but it can do it by region. I noticed in Texas, you can end up with two very strong teams playing in the first round while teams from two geographically similar weak districts might play. For example, east Houston/Beaumont is weaker than west Houston, yet generally speaking east Houston schools will match up early and west Houston schools will beat up on each other. If you were to seed the region, you'd get a more fair bracket, I think.

    In Louisiana's other sports, they seed in a more subjective way, sort of like the NCAA, with a committee (although I don't think post-season berths are based on invite. I think qualifying for the playoffs is done through district finishes, but once the field is determined, the seeding of those teams is up to committee. I may be mistaken).

    You can't do that in Texas state-wide because you'll end up with a 1 seed from Texarkana and a 64 seed from El Paso or the Rio Grande Valley and that would be just crazy. But aren't the regions broken into 16-team pods? You could seed those regions without adding much, if any, travel cost. The only downside to it would be the neutral site thing. With the brackets sort of pre-determined, it's easier to set up neutral sites when you can anticipate how the brackets are falling. With seeding, you can't really do that. In Louisiana, they use home fields, so it's not a factor.
     
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