SIDELINE SCENE: Move to nine classifications means well but is misguided

It’s not as simple as the “every kid gets a trophy” philosophy that rubs so many people the wrong way, but the Florida High School Athletic Association’s recent move to expand baseball and softball to nine classifications still is misguided.

On June 9, the FHSAA announced its board of directors had approved a ninth classification for baseball and softball for this school year. Boys and girls basketball and girls volleyball are to follow suit in 2016-17, and the logical assumption is that football will follow suit in fall 2017 after games contracted for 2015 and 2016 have been played.

The reasoning isn’t terrible — in the lower classifications, the disparity among district competitors can be significant. In part, this is because at the 1A and 2A level, a difference of a few students in a school’s enrollment can make a significant difference. 

So, what the FHSAA has done with its new baseball and softball classifications is to rank schools by student population and divide them into the nine classifications — with the highest two-thirds by population divided into Classes 5A, 6A, 7A, 8A and 9A and the remaining third divided into 1A through 4A, with 1A remaining designated as rural.

It starts with baseball and softball but, in reality, it is more about football. 

Many familiar with prep sports believe the goal is to curb the tide of smaller programs defecting to independent leagues — such as the Sunshine State Athletic Conference, which houses CFCA, Legacy and Windermere Prep, locally. 

A notable 82 football programs will compete as independents in 2015. Their reasons for leaving district competition largely center on competitive balance and not getting beat up by powerhouse district rivals. Sports are supposed to be fun, and it’s hard to sell to kids that going 1-9 every season is fun. 

So, the FHSAA’s logic is to further divvy the lower classifications — but that may not actually help. Student population certainly matters, but it is not the sole basis to judge balance. 

When you’re talking about private schools and charter schools — the types of programs that make up a large portion of the smaller classifications — each comes with its own set of priorities. There will be schools that field a team, in any given sport, simply for school spirit and for the kids to have something to do. You’ll also have programs that field a team to win championships. 

If they are in the same district, things get ugly — even if they have the exact same number of students.

There are all sorts of nuances as to why a school in Class 2A may be particularly dominant when its counterpart in district play may not be able to keep up. For instance, there are programs in affluent areas with a high population of students whose parents may have been professional athletes. Even if that school has a like population, there is a good chance those kids have been groomed as high-level athletes for far longer than the kids who may take the field for a charter school. That’s just an example, of course (and debatably a good one or not), but you don’t have to be familiar with high school sports to see the logic. 

With that in mind, the FHSAA may need to get more creative than simply adding classifications.

One solution could be a hybrid model of the open classification they have in California. Basically, this would look like having the powerhouses of the lower classifications between 2A and 4A play in a separate “open” classification for competitive balance and for better games (it would be a separate decision whether this would include the regular season or just the playoffs — after all, it’s just an idea). This way, you’re taking into account school population and past results, and it is something that can be revisited annually if there is a team that, perhaps, does not fit or a team that plays its way into the discussion.

There are certainly questions and flaws that could be attributed to that model, so I’m not offering that specific idea as the be-all, end-all solution. Rather, what I’m suggesting is to be creative and use common sense — along with a willingness to not be adherent to the standard way of doing things.

Adding classifications has opened up state title opportunities to more programs, sure, but it also has hurt sports at the higher classifications because similar-size programs that are neighbors might be in different classifications. 

When I was working in Seminole County a few years back, it was really cool in one sense to see Oviedo and Hagerty (which is in Oviedo, also) both advance to the FHSAA Boys Basketball Final Four in classes 7A and 8A, respectively. At the same time, there was some absurdity to these crosstown rivals that were so similar not competing for the same championship and thereby not facing one another in district and regional playoffs with the kind of atmosphere of which prep sports fans dream.

West Orange and Ocoee don’t compete for the same state title in football, either.

I’m all for competitive balance, but that may require getting more creative in the lower classifications and reevaluating whether the schools in 6A, 7A and 8A really need to be in three separate classifications.