There is no way to know, prior to a high school football game's kickoff, which team is going to emerge victorious. One factor, though, does appear to give a fairly reliable indication as to who wins and who loses…enrollment numbers.
The News & Reporter studied the results of every Class A and AA game played in the state last season and compared the outcome to the enrollment numbers of each team involved in all those contests. Games that involved out-of-state teams, non-SCHSL private schools or home-school teams were not considered, since their enrollment is not certified by the State Department of Education. The results show that more than 62 percent of the time, the school with the larger enrollment number wins, even if the difference in student body is slight. In Class A, South Carolina's smallest classification, the numbers are very pronounced. Out of 234 games played involving those schools, the school with a higher attendance figure won 66.6 percent of the time. For the most part, the bigger the gap in attendance, the less chance there appears to be for the smaller team to succeed. The were 45 games last year in which a Class A school faced a team with a student body at least 400 greater than its own. The smaller team was the winner in only seven of those games, a winning percentage of 15.5 percent. The biggest attendance gap any Class A school was able to bridge was 890, which came when McBee defeated Lakewood. There were only 11 games involving teams that had a size differential of between 300 and 399 students in Class A last year, but the smaller school won only three times (27.2 percent of the time). Thirty-nine times, there were games involving an attendance spread between the schools of 200 and 299 students with the smaller school winning 10 times, or 25.6 percent of the time. That's a lower percentage of small-over-big upsets than with a spread of 301 to 400 students, but it comes with a sample size more than three times as large (39 games compared to 11). There were 55 games last season in Class A where the difference in enrollment was 100 to 199 students and the smaller school won 41.8 percent of the time. That's basically the same as the winning percentage for a smaller school when the difference in student body is less than 100 (35 of 84, or 41.6 percent). Not surprisingly, the team with the most wins over larger schools was McBee, which advanced to the upperstate finals in the Division I-A playoffs. The Panthers, who played a number of AA and AAA schools out-of-region, had an impressive eight victories over bigger schools. Cross, C.E. Murray (the Division II-A lowerstate champion) and Hunter-Kinard-Tyler (a two time-defending Division II champ from 2013 and '14) had six "up" wins each. Interestingly, Hunter-Kinard-Tyler, which has under 160 students, was at a size disadvantage in terms of enrollment in every game it played last season. Lake View had five wins over larger schools while McCormick, Whitmire, Lamar (the Division II state champion) and Williston-Elko collected four apiece. There are a lot of advantages that come with being a larger school and some are obvious. More students means more potential athletes walking the halls. Lewisville Coach Will Mitchell said that is certainly one factor, but said there are others. Smaller schools can usually put 22 competitive starters on the field, but often times don't have as much depth or may have to play some athletes on both sides of the ball. "Every once in a while, you get a Class A team who doesn't have to start guys both ways. For the second time in my five years at Lewisville, we're in that position now, but it only takes one injury to start a domino effect. If I get an offensive lineman hurt, then I may have to move a defensive linemen to his spot, where that guy had been only playing one way. Then I probably have to spell him on one side or the other, so a guy who wouldn't have been playing now is," Mitchell said. More players and superior depth aren't the only two advantages, however. Mitchell said some actually have nothing to do with players at all. Some Class A schools are very small (19 have less than 250 students) and have extremely limited budgets for athletics. "Bigger schools usually have more resources, more money. That allows them to not only have more coaches, but have coaches with teaching positions who are on campus all day. Smaller schools almost always have to rely on volunteer coaches from the community or ones who have another job," Mitchell said. Great Falls Coach John Barrett said it may not be ideal to play schools considerably bigger than your own, but said sometimes money and logistics dictate it. "Sometimes you're almost forced to because of location. When I was at York we had to play Rock Hill and Northwestern because they were eight miles down the road," Barrett said. Barrett also said that certain teams seem to be impervious to the affect of smaller enrollment. He cited Lamar and Dillon which regularly beat schools that are larger than them, sometimes considerably larger. They seem to relish the chance to beat "the big boys," he said. "Places like that, ones that have tradition, I really don't think it even matters," he said. Size differential makes a difference in the AA ranks as well, but not as much as in Class A. There were 266 games last year involving AA schools in South Carolina and the school with higher enrollment numbers won 62.2 percent of the time. That's better than Class A performed, but Mitchell said the differences in the number of players and resources is much bigger when a school with 200 students plays one with 600, as opposed to the school with 600 students playing one with an enrollment of 1,000. There is some cause for hope for Class A's smallest teams. As mentioned, HKT won two recent titles despite being the smallest of the small and in of Class A's two title games last year, the smaller team brought home the big trophy. For an expanded version of this story, featuring a more in-depth breakdown of AA numbers, CLICK HERE.
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November 2021
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