Anna junior Zach Osborn swats away the arm of Versailles’ Travis George during a Division VI regional final on Nov. 17, 2023 at Sidney Memorial Stadium. Anna and all four football teams in Shelby County will remain in the same divisions and regions they were in last year. Versailles has moved back up to Div. V.
Bryant Billing | Sidney Daily News
No divisional or regional assignments changed for Shelby County football teams when the Ohio High School Athletic Association released its breakdowns for 2024 on Thursday.
Sidney remains in Division II, Region 8 while Anna stays in Division VI, Region 24 and Fort Loramie and Lehman Catholic remain in Division VII, Region 28.
The Redskins and Cavaliers will again have to contend as being in the same region as Marion Local, which won the D-VII state title last year. The Flyers won the Div. VI state title in 2022 and beat Anna in lopsided fashion in a playoff opener. They knocked Fort Loramie out in a second-round D-VII game in 2021.
Anna won’t have to worry about facing Midwest Athletic Conference rival Versailles in a playoff game this year. The Tigers are back in Division V after playing the last two seasons in D-VI. The Rockets lost 41-14 to Versailles in a playoff game in a regional final. Versailles lost to Kirtland in a D-VI state final; the squad beat Kirtland in the 2021 D-V state final.
Minster, New Bremen and Riverside are in D-VII, Region 28 along with Fort Loramie and Lehman. Tri-Village, which Anna beat 56-51 in a regional semifinal, has dropped to D-VI to D-VII and will be in Region 28.
The OHSAA board of directors approved the 2024 division and region breakdowns on Thursday. The breakdowns are based on updated enrollment data from the Ohio Department of Education that was sent to the OHSAA earlier this spring. The data will be used for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years.
Enrollment data is refreshed every two years. The data the OHSAA uses to assign divisions are schools’ enrollment for the bottom three grades (freshman, sophomore, junior classes) at the start of a two-year cycle. Competitive balance factors (including transfers) contribute to division assignments in several sports, including football.
For football, the OHSAA will continue to place the largest 70 schools in Div. I and divide the rest as equally as possible in Divisions II through VII.
This is different from how other sports (like boys and girls basketball) with postseasons that were recently expanded from four to seven divisions will be divided. In those sports, Divisions I and II will each have 64 teams, and the remaining teams will be divided as equally as possible in Divisions III through VII.
Football practice will start on Aug. 1; games are permitted to start three weeks later (the first Friday of the season is Aug. 23). Teams are permitted to have 13 days of non-contact practice from May 15 to July 15.
State championships are scheduled to be held Dec. 5-7 at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton.
Reach Bryant Billing at 937-538-4822, or follow @SidneyOHSports on Twitter and @BryantBillingSDN on Facebook.
