When the South Carolina High School League first unveiled its currently-in-use realignment plan, legendary Great Falls Coach/AD John Smith said it was apparent that the league was aiming more for competitive balance than ease of travel. The recently unveiled realignment plan (which is set to take effect next year) does the same thing, the league itself has said. That may be true in theory where Class A is concerned, but it won’t be once the law of unintended consequences fully plays out.
If the new realignment plan stays intact, the number of Class A teams drops from 40 to 37 (some private schools and academies that field only one or two sports are moving in, thus plugging some of the holes) and the number of football-playing schools drops from 34 to 29. Lewisville, Dixie, Hannah-Pamplico, Charleston Charter and East Clarendon are all scheduled to move up out of Class A into AA. East Clarendon’s move is understandable as they now have enrollment over 400 and Charleston Charter requested that they be allowed to move up. Shifting the other three up doesn’t make sense to me on a number of levels. Just generally, I don’t like moving multiple teams out of Class A and not moving anyone down. Hard to understand the logic in moving Lewisville, Dixie, and Hannah-Pamplico up to AA, creating three, seven-team AA regions and leaving three, five-team Class A regions in their wake (and for football purposes, it’s three regions with only four football-playing members). None of those schools is crazily outsized for Class A and Dixie actually lost enrollment from the last 135-day numbers. Why is McBee, at 339 students, in Class A while Allendale-Fairfax (who was moved up to AA last time around, didn’t want to go and badly wants to come back down) in AA at 340? A league representative told me directly that the rationale “was to place schools in classifications that created the lowest disparity in enrollment between the largest and smallest school in each classification.” That’s fine, and I’m not saying realignment is an easy process or one where everyone gets what they want, but why stop there? Why not send McBee up too, since that would lessen the disparity even more, right? Of course it INCREASES the disparity in the biggest and smallest schools in AA at the same time. It feels like the league artificially set a cap at 340 students and is trying to protect the state’s smallest schools. As I’ve noted before, you can’t make decisions based on outlier schools at the very top (Wando and its 4,000-plus students) or very bottom (Calhoun Falls Charter at 94 students), though. You can’t make a classification where a school with under 100 students can reasonably expect to regularly contend for state titles in all sports, just like you can’t craft a 5A class where the smallest school isn’t going to be dwarfed by Wando. All three can approach their appeals tomorrow from different angles. All are within 50 students of what is slated to be the largest school in Class A. When the league went to five classes last year after decades of a four-class system (to reduce the difference between the largest and smallest schools in each class) it included a provision that a school within 50 students of the cutoff at the top or bottom of any class could be moved up or down to help balance a region where needed. They can make the previously noted argument that the move creates three bloated AA regions and leaves three depleted Class A regions. Also to crown a region champion, have an all-region team or a region player of the year, a region must have at least three schools participating in a sport and the move could leave all three affected Class A regions unable to do so in multiple sports. For example, Lewisville leaving Region II-A would leave only two schools playing volleyball or competing in boys or girls cross-country. A Title IX argument could certainly be made, since that would have a more adverse effect on girl’s athletics in the region. Title IV reads in part “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." High schools have been successfully sued under Title IX for a lack of girl’s athletic opportunities in the past. I think the most compelling argument of all, though, is the league’s own stated goal of competitive balance. In theory, moving three larger Class A teams up, ones who just had strong (though not thoroughly dominant by any stretch) athletic years makes Class A more competitive. In practice, though, something else is going to happen. Per the league constitution, for a classification to stage playoffs and crown a state champion there have to be at least 12 schools in the classification participating in a sport. With Charleston Charter and East Clarendon definitely and understandably moving up, Lewisville, Dixie and Hannah-Pamplico slated to join them and Allendale-Fairfax not being allowed to come back down, there won’t be enough teams playing multiple sports for Class A to have its own state champion. So what happens in those instances? The same thing that happened in girl’s soccer this past year, that being that Class A teams have to compete in the AA playoffs. Under the new realignment plan, Class A teams would have to be pushed up to the AA playoffs in boys soccer, girls soccer, boys and girls cross country and boys and girls golf. The numbers would be really close on volleyball and girls track as well. Put another way, Class A teams would be run up into the AA post-season in everything except football, baseball, softball and girls and boys basketball. So, Class A schools will be competing against schools with enrollment of close to 700, a daunting task for North (160 students), Whitmire (178 students) or heck, even McBee at 339 students. Also, moving up to AA means competing (again) against Christ Church, St. Joe’s, Fox Creek, Gray Collegiate and a slew of other non-public schools that have no fixed attendance zones, can draw students from anyway, can recruit and offer scholarships and can cap enrollment to keep from moving up in classification if they so choose. Part of the reason the league went to five classes and built in the flexibility rule for schools within 50 students of a classification cutoff in the first place was to move non-public schools out of Class A, where there were dominating in almost every sport. Going up against privates/charters and public schools with two, three, four (and in extreme cases six) times their enrollment all but guarantees Class A schools would have ZERO chance to win state. Sure seems like they’d be a lot more competitive playing Lewisville (380 students), Hannah-Pamplico and Dixie (354 students each) and other Class A schools. No appeals today that dealt with a school trying to change classifications was successful. I hope that won’t be the case tomorrow, for the sake of Class A as a whole…and for the purpose of competitive balance.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
TravisI am Travis, the king 0f SC 1A Football Archives
November 2021
Categories |