The largest expansion proposal in the history of the Ohio High School Athletic Association will be voted on by the organization’s board of directors on Thursday.
The board will vote on expanding divisions for several sports. With passage, the largest impact will be felt in boys and girls basketball, volleyball, softball and baseball, which stand to increase from four divisions to seven.
Soccer is currently at three divisions and would be expanded to five. The OHSAA said in a press release its board will continue to discuss additional sports.
The proposal calls for the following scale to be used to guide the board’s decision on the number of divisions for the affected sports:
199 or fewer teams: 1 Division
200 to 299 teams: 2 Divisions
300 to 399 teams: 3 Divisions
400 to 499 teams: 4 Divisions
500 to 599 teams: 5 Divisions
600 to 699 teams: 6 Divisions
700 and more teams: 7 Divisions
The proposal does not include any expansion to the football postseason, which is already at seven divisions. In addition, any changes to the current deployment of the competitive balance process would need to be voted upon by OHSAA member schools during the annual referendum voting process.
Divisions I, II smaller than the rest
For volleyball, soccer, basketball, softball and baseball, the largest 64 schools would be placed into Division I. The next largest 64 schools would be placed into Division II.
The remaining schools would be divided as evenly as possible into the remaining divisions. The OHSAA already does something similar to this in football, in which the largest 10 percent of schools are placed into Division I and the remaining schools are divided evenly in Divisions II through VII.
Sidney is the lone area school which would stand to benefit the most from the difference between how divisions are proposed to be determined in these sports as compared to football. Sidney would be Division III in those sports as opposed to Division II in football.
Click here to see projected divisional breakdowns for each sport affected by the proposal.
If the increased number of divisions is approved by the board, the OHSAA will announce structural and dates changes for future state tournaments at a later date.
Ute says OHSAA believes expansion wouldn’t water down championships
The OHSAA said in a press release the proposal follows months of discussion with the board and six recent regional meetings with member schools in each of the association’s athletic districts. The board could approve all of the proposal, none of the proposal, certain parts of the proposal, or delay all or parts of the proposal to a future meeting. For any parts of the proposal that are approved, the board will also determine the year of implementation.
“Ohio is the fourth-largest state in our country in terms of the number of schools, but in many cases, our number of divisions don’t reflect that size compared to smaller states,” OHSAA executive director Doug Ute said. “Any time you can give more kids the opportunity to have a postseason tournament run and get their communities engaged and excited, that’s a good thing, and we don’t believe that having more state champions waters down the significance of winning a championship.
“This proposal is membership-driven in terms of the feedback I’ve received since becoming the executive director in 2020 and I have been talking about this concept with our board for almost a year now. The majority of the feedback we received from the regional meetings that we just completed was positive about expansion.”
