I think everything that can possibly be said about realignment has now been said…so of course I’m now going to say more things about realignment because wearing out a topic to the point that people’s gag reflexes are triggered is what the sports media does better than anyone.
I already shared my overall feeling with you on the topic yesterday. I don’t like moving multiple teams out of Class A and not moving anyone down. I don’t understand the logic in moving Lewisville (380 students), Dixie (354) and Hannah-Pamplico (354) 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). I don’t understand the logic behind having McBee in Class A at 339 students, but not Allendale-Fairfax (who would really like to be back in Class A) at 340. I asked the South Carolina High School League about those points and asked for a general idea on what their thought process was when it came to their approach to Class A. They did respond… “The rationale was to place schools in classifications that created the lowest disparity in enrollment between the largest and smallest school in each classification.” Alrighty. It’s not my intention to beat them up here. Realignment is a long, hellish endeavor that is always going to leave a lot of people unhappy, since nobody wants to be the smallest team in a class and nobody wants to be in a region with West-Where-The-Hell Tech, which is five hours from anywhere and doesn’t have paved roads and you have to park your bus and ford across a skeeter-infested creek to get there. But somebody has to be the smallest school in a class and somebody has to get their pants wet wading across that creek. However, to me, the league already achieved the goal of lessening the gap between the largest and smallest in each class by going to a five-class system with our current realignment plan. The moves made in the proposed plan, we’re only talking about a handful of difference on enrollment. So McBee will be the biggest team in Class A at 339, but Allendale-Fairfax at 340 is somehow too many? Hannah-Pamplico and Dixie at 354 (15 more than McBee) is outsized? Lewisville at 380 is out of the question? Yes, the move lessens the gap between big and small in Class A, but it increases it in AA. The schools headed up to AA will now be tasked with facing schools twice their size. Yes, to stay in Class A means they will be two or three times bigger than some schools…I said it before, but there are a handful of very tiny little Class A schools with 100-ish students. I love those schools, but you can’t make decisions based on those because they’re outliers and they’re always going to be much smaller than the biggest school in their classification no matter how far down you cut the number. And it isn’t like they can’t compete (see HKT’s football state titles recently, Whitmire’s turnaround success on the gridiron, Calhoun Falls Charter’s run to upperstate in boys basketball etc.). To me, with the five-class system in place, decisions on teams who are “on the bubble” enrollment-wise should be made based on practicality and creating three, four-team football regions in Class A to create bloated seven-team ones in AA doesn’t fit the bill there. I also don’t think it’s good practice to have a classification with 37 schools (only 29 football-playing teams) especially when that class is the most apt to lose schools. There are supposed to be 42 overall teams in Class A right now, but there’s only 40 because Tamassee-Salem and Lincoln were closed down. Schools with under 200 students are always going to be in the crosshairs of someone trying to cut expenses. What if the new plan holds and there are more closures. What if Calhoun Falls Charter goes to eight-man (as I’ve heard is a possibility at some point) ball? In that case, with Dixie having been moved out of that region, you’d be left with three school that play football? A three-team region? Really? Schools with low enrollment can also have cycles where they have a low percentage of boys. The percentage of boys in a school is a genetic crap shoot and sometimes that does make a difference. Great Falls had 190-some student last year, but only 80-some boys. That improves everyone’s chances of having a date on prom night, but it can spell doom for a football team. Indeed, Great Falls forfeited one game last year and was close to pulling the plug on the season. Leaving Lewisville, Hannah-Pamplico and Dixie in Class A and moving Allendale-Fairfax down provides a layer of insurance that Class A needs and AA doesn’t. I hope they all appeal and I hope those appeals are successful. Couple of random notes: *I declared the moving of Charleston Charter School for ‘Cipherin and Bug Studies (277 kids) up to AA total lunacy, but figured there had to be a reason. There was. They requested it for travel purposes, I’m told. *I’ve sent out some pre-season questionnaires to as many Class A coaches as I could find. I’ve gotten a few back, but if you received one, please take a second and fill it out so I can provide as much info on every school as possible. Some contact info is proving hard to find, so if you’re a Class A coach and haven’t heard from me, shoot your contact info to [email protected] or message me @CNR_Sports.
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November 2021
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