No need to protect small WPIAL schools
There’s no question that nonboundary schools — that is, private and Catholic schools that don’t draw their student bodies from a set geographic area — have a competitive advantage in high school athletics.
The question posed by a new consortium of 44 small public schools (A, AA and AAA classifications) is whether that advantage is so great that they should be broken out of the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League (WPIAL) regular seasons altogether. More than three dozen of these public schools are asking the league not to schedule them against non-boundary schools.
At least in football, there is little evidence to bolster the public schools’ complaints.
Last fall, five Catholic schools competed in the six WPIAL championships, including four in the three smaller classifications. This extraordinary success rate seems to have triggered increased anxiety about competitive advantage. But it was just that: extraordinary.
Since 2016, when the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association went to a six-classification system, about 1 in 8 WPIAL teams in the three smaller divisions were nonboundary. And they won three of 18 championships — and two of those three titles were just last year.
But what about playoff berths? Those 12.5% of schools have taken about 15% of playoff spots since 2016. That’s only a little better than what you’d expect from random chance.
This hardly seems like enough of a disparity to warrant a boycott.
Compare this to the juggernaut that is the Philadelphia Catholic League (PCL), which has fielded 15 state champions and 11 runners-up since joining the PIAA in 2008. And they’ve done so with star players from out-of-state, including Ohio State recruit Kyle McCord, a consensus Pennsylvania Player of the Year who lived in Mount Laurel, N.J.
This gaming of the system absolutely demands reform, but it’ll have to come from the PIAA, which seems uninterested.
Around here, the non-boundary advantage is more pronounced in some other sports, most notably basketball, where these schools have won 11 of the last 12 boys’ A, AA and AAA titles. Whether it’s illicit recruiting or traditions of excellence that draw student-athletes, it’s clear that small public schools have a hard time measuring up.
But rather than chasing nonboundary schools out of the WPIAL, or onto an island within it, the focus should be on tightening and enforcing existing recruiting rules. Public school districts don’t have an inalienable right to their families’ athletes, and they might even lose more to a completely non-boundary section or league, where excellence might collect even more densely.
We’d also suggest, perhaps naively, that private and Catholic schools focus on their academic and spiritual missions, rather than so intensely on athletics. It’s not for us to say, but it’s hard to believe that (for instance) the actual Our Lady of the Sacred Heart is hugely invested in her school’s football rankings.
As for the public schools with struggling programs who feel jilted by the system: It’ll be all the sweeter when they conquer their rivals through patient progress, rather than politicking.