Schools asked about new classification plan
The Florida High School Athletic Association will seek input from its public, private and charter school membership this month regarding a proposal to create a separate division for the state’s best teams and alter its classification format for all team sports.
Cape Coral athletic director Thomas Kenna made the recommendation to gather feedback Thursday afternoon during an online informational meeting between FHSAA staff and the new governor-appointed board of directors.
It will be a quick turnaround for all involved.
The FHSAA board may move to vote on the changes — or keep things as is — when it officially meets Nov. 5-6 in Gainesville.
The board, which consists of three athletic directors, three principals, a college counselor, school board member, superintendent, senior chancellor, chief financial officer and two citizens-at-large, got a crash-course in the current classification process during the 81-minute Zoom meeting.
A classification task force assembled by FHSAA executive director Craig Damon met five times and submitted a new plan that would create top-tier open division state championship for team sports that have power rankings in an effort to increase competitive balance at a time where a handful of schools have dominated some brackets.
The Open divisions would consist of the top-rated teams in FHSAA power rankings regardless of classification. All other playoff teams would compete in postseason play in their assigned classes, which are divided based upon student enrollment.
Scott Jamison, the FHSAA staffer who moderated most of Thursday’s question-and-answer session, said the association continues to seek a classification
system “that would create a more equitable situation for all schools.”
One drastic change for football would do away with mandatory district games during the regular season. That would free schools to build their own schedules, as is now the policy in other sports, but only for nine games within the first 10 weeks of regular season play. Football teams would still be aligned into districts and the top two teams in each district, based on the rankings, would play for championships in Week 11.
Teams not playing for district titles would be able to schedule one additional opponent to get to 10 regular season games.
The number of teams participating in Open divisions would vary based on the number of classifications per sport.
Similar to year’s past, sports such as baseball, basketball, football, girls volleyball and softball would be separated into eight classifications below the Open division with 7A being the largest and Rural being the smallest. Sports with 5-8 classes, which includes soccer, would move top 32 teams into the Open division.
Sports that now have 1-2 classes would add eight-team Open divisions. That includes lacrosse, girls beach volleyball, boys volleyball, girls flag football and water polo.
The current classification format for competitive cheer and “individual” sports bowling, cross country, golf, swimming, track, tennis, weightlifting and wrestling would remain the same.
Jamison said concerns expressed from some of the classification task force members include the number of teams that would be pulled into the Open division (8, 16 or 32?), the accuracy of playoff power ranking, travel time and expense for playoff trips.
Brief conversation was had about the potential of adding a margin-of-victory factor to improve the FHSAA rankings formula.
The former FHSAA board held a 9-7 vote nearly two years ago that instituted a Metro and Suburban classification split for football. That came despite the objection of then-executive director George Tomyn, who recommended more analysis be done before