crimsonace1

IHSAA isn't going to send 3 different outlier schools north into 3 different sectionals. Here's the likely map for the north. 1: Lake Central, Portage, Crown Point, Lafayette Jeff 2: Elkhart, Penn, Warsaw, Carroll 3: Homestead, FW Northrop, Westfield, Noblesville 4: Carmel, Zionsville, HSE, Fishers or 1: Lake Central, Portage, Crown Point, Elkhart 2: Penn, Warsaw, FW Northrop, Carroll 3: Homestead, Noblesville, HSE, Fishers 4: Westfield, Carmel, Zionsville, Lafayette Jeff I expect the first option to carry. The south is almost set in stone: 5: NC/LC/LN/Cathedral 6: Pike/BD/Brownsburg/Avon 7: Southport/Perry/Tech/WC 8: Jeff/CN/CG/FC You're pointing out precedents - there is no precedent for sending a Hamilton County school up U.S. 31 to the Michigan border. While there are precedents on pairing Zionsville with Lafayette-area schools in *5A*, in 6A, generally Carmel & Zionsville are tied together, as are HSE/Fishers. Putting those four together makes for a sensible sectional field. The key is going to be, you're likely going to have to split up the three Allen County schools somehow just because there are nine "north" schools north of the U.S. 30 corridor and seven south. Someone is going to have to get tied into the Central Indiana schools. Homestead makes the most sense because it's the farthest southwest and closest to I-69 ... and Noblesville, HSE & Fishers are also a short distance off I-69.

Forgot to drop Wood Memorial & move Scecina to 2A. Fixed now. Thanks.

Email correspondence with the IHSAA's communications department.

FYI, we have confirmation from the IHSAA that Chatard will stay in 4A, Western Boone in 3A and LCC in 2A for both years of the upcoming cycle. Looks like WeBo is 3A - especially with a growing enrollment - for good as it is.

The first set had a bizarrely wrong number for Bremen and had 10-year-old numbers for several private schools. IHSAA uses fall enrollment numbers for classification. Bottom line, when you have 8 teams in a sectional and there aren't any teams near you, some insane sectional travel is somewhat unavoidable. I post the maps for a reason. You can look at them and see how you'd do things differently.

That was an anomaly due to there having been more than 320 football-playing schools to start the cycle + some success factor adjustments (and the Elkhart/Hammond consolidations) that caused 6A to dip below 32 teams (because the IHSAA didn't want to move teams up for a year) and the weird COVID year extending the cycle by one year. The plan, since six classes began, has always been 32 in 6A, 64 in 4A-1A and the remainder in 5A if there are 320+ schools, and 32 in 6A/5A and the remainder spread equally among 4A-1A if there are fewer than 320. It's looking like 32/32/63/63/63/63 this time because there appear to be 316 football-playing schools.

I don't understand what you mean with "classes more balanced?" The football setup is pretty well set in stone. I don't know how you can "balance" the classes any more than they already are. Also, it appears Monrovia & Cascade will both be 3A in hoops (as well as Heritage Christian). Will make some big changes in Central Indiana.

There's been some discussion about changing the class structure in the 4-class sports to add a fifth class and use hard enrollment cutoffs. Football isn't changing because of the need for 32 or 64 teams in each class due to playing one week and keeping everyone playing the same number of tournament rounds.

That's been my schtick around here for years ;). Rural populations have been declining for years and the increase in 1A private/charter schools adding football have pushed a number of teams up into higher classes. I've noticed the enrollment cutoffs between classes are much lower (but the cutoffs for 5A/6A and 4A/5A are higher). In hoops, the 2A/3A cutoff is something like 495. It's traditionally been well into the 500s.

It's pretty easy to do - especially since it will likely only affect two. Just put the 7-team sectional in 3A & 1A in an area where Chatard & LCC could easily drop in.

The north/south line is determined by number of schools. Here's how I see 5A playing out 9: Hammond Central, Morton, Munster, Merrillville 10: Valpo, Chesterton, MC, LaPorte 11: SB Adams, Mishawaka, Concord, Goshen 12: Dwenger, North, Snider, Anderson With the southern half, there's a lot of ways you can go 13: McCutcheon, Harrison, Plainfield, Decatur Central 14: TH North, TH South, Bloomington North, Bloomington South 15: Seymour, Columbus East, Franklin, Whiteland 16: Ev. North, Castle, Floyd Central, New Albany Basically, the main questions are do you split up McC/Harrison and send Harrison to 12 (and Anderson back south) or do you make Anderson make the long trip? I anticipate the IHSAA is going to try to keep the pairs together, and Anderson's location on I-69 makes it an easy send to Fort Wayne. In the south, you have multiple pairs - McC/Harrison, Plainfield/DC, the TH & Bloomington schools, Seymour/East, Franklin/Whiteland, EvN/Castle, Floyd/NA. You can mix & match those pairs in a lot of different ways. You could flip Plainfield/DC with the TH schools (and if that happens, pair Franklin/Whiteland with Plainfield/DC, then likely the Bloomington schools with the two Evansville schools, putting Seymour/East with Floyd/NA).

Yes, the classification cycle starts over this year, but there has been no clarification on what will happen to the specific schools who got bumped mid-cycle last year. There are a couple of ways they can go - keep them up for the full cycle, keep them up for half the cycle or send them back to their original class. This only affects two - maybe three - schools in football (LCC, Chatard and maybe WeBo, since it appears WeBo will be 3A due to enrollment anyway).

If you're into the four-class sports, here's the maps for those (based on 101 schools per class) ... or at least basketball. There might be some adjustments for the other sports (volleyball and especially baseball & softball) because a handful of schools don't have teams, so the number of schools per class is slightly different. Remember, in those sports, teams bumped up due to SF don't bump anyone else down, thanks to Lebanon getting mad about New Pal softball being bumped down and beating them in the regional a few years ago and lobbying for a change to IHSAA bylaws. https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1mCCJ1OuHye-XrVzNuDG2oPCxB8mco9K9&usp=sharing

Southridge would be 3A on enrollment anyway. They and Pioneer won't "probably" be kept up. They *will* be kept up. They have achieved two points in their higher class in the last two years. The question marks are Chatard, Western Boone & LCC. Each bumped last year, but didn't win the regional and thus doesn't have two points. My guess is they will be up for the start of the cycle and then drop back down if they don't get their two points this year (except WeBo, which will likely stay up in 3A due to enrollment).

This is three years old, so it doesn't include any new programs (like Purdue Poly), but here's the list directly from the IHSAA of which schools compete in which sports. https://www.ihsaa.org/Portals/0/ihsaa/documents/schools/School Classifications by Sport.pdf

What I expect to happen is they'll be up next year and if they don't get their two points, they'll fall back to the lower class for 2023 (and the 7-team sectional fields will be strategically drawn to allow this to happen). Western Boone appears to be 3A on enrollment.

The IHSAA used to do that. I think they're waiting until the basketball tournaments are done and Success Factor points added in to release the classifications so they can do one fell swoop. I also have not received an answer to what they're going to do with Chatard, WeBo and LCC.

Here's the list of football-playing schools tabbed by enrollment and likely class next year. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18x4CjZOBcDgC9V6clbOXc4XgTXubeav5H5kXfSocLSk/edit?usp=sharing

Probably the easiest thing to do is go to Harrell's page and see the schools that *do* and then cross-reference that with the IHSAA directory. There are 316 football-playing schools and 407 IHSAA members.

I've updated the class maps based on the new enrollments. Adjustments from the original *63 schools in 4A-A Norwell from 4A-3A (due to 63 schools) Rensselaer, Centerville, Pike Central from 2A>3A Mater Dei, Luers, Bremen, Andrean from 3A>2A Providence, Eastern Hancock from 2A>A Again, made the assumption that Chatard (4A) and LCC (2A) will at least begin in their Success Factored class and possibly move down if they do not get their requisite two points this year., Western Boone will be the smallest 3A on enrollment. If Chatard goes back to 3A next year, Norwell will move to 4A. If LCC goes back to 1A next year, Eastern Hancock will go to 2A.

Both have schedules listed on Harrell's site.

It seems most of the issues were with private school enrollments - and some of them were several years out of date. It appears the IHSAA was given bad data by the Department of Education. While public schools have a "count day" and have to report that data to the DOE for funding purposes, private schools have different funding mechanisms (vouchers & tuition), so their reporting is different.

When the IHSAA sends out the corrected enrollment numbers, I'll adjust the maps. I used the IHSAA's enrollment list (since deleted) and Harrell's site. I may need to delete Wood Memorial, which would take it back to 316.

There was apparently some bad data. Have heard from several people the IHSAA has circulated a memo to the schools stating the enrollments posted have some discrepancies and are in the process of being corrected.

They have a turf field, they just don't play games on it.