Hurricane postpones reclassification debate

The Florida High School Athletic Association pushed today’s scheduled special meeting in Gainesville of its athletic directors advisory committee to Wednesday morning of next week (Oct. 17) due to the threat of Hurricane Michael on the state.

The subject is the FHSAA’s hotly-debated proposal to revise reclassification. The plan in its current form would eliminate mandatory regular season district play in 2019-20 but retain district tournaments for seven sports: boys and girls basketball, baseball, girls volleyball, softball and boys and girls soccer.

The 15-person A.D. committee will be looking at a draft that barely resembles the original proposal FHSAA administrators began pitching in meetings around the state four months ago. That plan would have created a “Super Division” of top-tier teams and a mix of schools of all sizes spread across six divisions (Division 1 through Division 6) — all based on power rankings rather than school enrollment counts.

FHSAA staffers hoped to sell the idea that using power rankings to align teams would greatly improve competitive balance in a state that has seen a troubling trend of state tournament blowouts and domination by some power programs.

But the competitive balance aspect was shot down by a volley of sharp criticism — much of it voiced by coaches who say simply reducing the number of classes should fix most of the imbalance issues without making drastic changes to the traditional system.

The latest draft calls for schools above the Class 1A rural division (which would remain unchanged) to be evenly divided across six classifications with about 100 teams per class in 2A through 7A. That would mean a major increase in numbers for the smaller classes.

Boys basketball for this school year has 46 schools in 4A, 53 in 3A and 60 in 2A — compared to 89 in 9A. Those numbers would grow to about 99 in every class under the proposed format.

Check online at SentinelVarsity.com to see a Sentinel breakdown of what all six classes above 1A could look like if the FHSAA plan is adopted.

The proposal is tentatively set to go to a vote of the board of directors on Monday, Oct. 29 in Gainesville.

TYLER COPELAND/FLRUNNERS.COM Gabriel Curtis is shown en route to a win during the FLRunners Invitational for Mount Dora Christian Academy. Curtis is expected to be one of many top runners in attendance for the Last Chance Invite at Lake Minneola High School on Saturday, Oct. 13.

STEPHEN M. DOWELL/ORLANDO SENTINEL Jen Darty and Oviedo, shown against Bishop Moore earlier this season, earned a Senior Night win Tuesday over Lake Highland Prep.