Five things to watch as GHSA reclassification process set to kick off

The Georgia High School Association’s reclassification committee will meet for the first time this academic year on Sept. 7. That unofficially kicks off the every-two-year process that will result in the GHSA’s 450-plus member schools finding out which class they’ll be assigned for 2024-25 and 2025-26.

Two years ago this time, GHSA reclassification committee chairman Curt Miller made a thunderclap when he proposed that the state’s largest private schools compete for their own championships without the public schools. The big nine are Benedictine, Blessed Trinity, Greater Atlanta Christian, Lovett, Marist, Pace Academy, St. Pius, Westminster and Woodward Academy.

That plan never materialized as Miller as others compromised and settled on applying a 3.0 multiplier on out-of-zone students, a move that hoisted Marist, St. Pius, Woodward Academy and Blessed Trinity into Class 6A and Westminster and Lovett into 4A. The multiplier also moved city schools Buford and Carrollton into the highest class. Several private and city schools moved up.

Miller says he doesn’t have any bombshells in his pockets this time and was uncertain of the reclass committee’s mood more than a week out.

“The 3.0 will probably stay if I had to guess, but we’ve got some new members on the committee, and we don’t know what’s going to come up,” Miller said.

One big change is certain. The GHSA moved in March to trim the number of classifications to seven from eight. That’s designed to ease travel, a growing concern among educators and parents who aren’t fond of abbreviated school days and long bus rides precipitated by sporting events.

Here are five things to watch as reclass heats up next month.

1. What will one fewer classification look like? The current Class 7A has 46 schools, the fewest of any class. Class 4A has 60. That’s the most. The GHSA likes to keep the highest class smaller because of the enrollment disparity from top to bottom. The biggest 7A school has 4,000 students. The smallest has 2,500. With fewer classifications, some classes must get bigger. Will the GHSA keep the highest and lowest classes smaller than the rest to limit enrollment mismatches? If not, some current Class 6A schools will be biting their nails. Had there been one fewer class this year, it’s likely that Houston County, Tift County, Rome, Gainesville and even Blessed Trinity would’ve been in a theoretical Class 6A with the likes of Mill Creek, Grayson and Parkview, schools with 3,500-plus students.

2. Will the new class structure really help with travel? GHSA executive director Robin Hines, who came to power in 2017, has always wanted to reduce the number of classifications. After all, he was a Georgia head football coach in the 1990s when there were only four classes. From a logistical standpoint, the GHSA is challenged to manage the increasing number of playoff events, especially with the number of sports also expanding. Fans have often complained that more classes means watered-down playoffs and championships. What turned the tide, though, was the state legislature, which hears from parents wondering why their kids spend so much time on buses for sports. Fewer classes will mean regions with more teams in them. That gives teams more guaranteed opponents on their schedule, and those opponents theoretically will be closer geographically. However, it remains to be seen if that matters. Putting the current 413 football teams into 64 regions comes to 6.5 teams per region. With 56 regions, it’s 7.4. If the legislature keeps pushing on travel, this could be just the first step in class contraction.

3. How will the GHSA address private schools? Despite the GHSA’s efforts to curb their success, private-school teams in all sports ironically won more state titles under the 3.0 multiplier than they did the season before – 61 to 58. A closer look, however, shows that the multiplier did reel in the bigger private schools. The big nine won 24 state titles instead of 36. But this outcome was offset by the success of the former Class A Private schools, which were freed again to compete with public schools in classes 4A and below for the first time in a decade. They won 37 state titles in 2022-23 after winning only 17 when confined to a class of their own in 2021-22. Now, the GHSA has agreed to exempt out-of-zone students from the multiplier if they’ve attended their school since fifth grade. That could allow some private schools to go back down in class.

4. How will the GHSA address city schools? Another target of the multiplier was Georgia’s 20 city schools, which typically have more out-of-zone students than county public schools. The 3.0 multiplier had a mixed effect on them. They won 17 state titles last academic year, one more than before the 3.0, but they also won 24% fewer playoff rounds in all playoff-bracket sports. In football, the city schools advanced 22 rounds after the 3.0 multiplier compared to 20 the season before. Carrollton and Gainesville were state runners-up. City schools remain far more successful than county public schools in football. Twelve of the 20 city schools won a playoff round or more last season. For county public schools, 99 of 355 advanced. Even private schools – getting 17 of their 46 football teams through the first round – weren’t as good as the city schools in that regard.

5. Will there be a radical proposal? The GHSA almost never talks about this, probably because schools whose teams get regularly slaughtered under Friday night lights rarely speak up about it. But here are some startling football statistics that are even more stark in some other sports: The average score of a region football game last season was 38-12. More than 40% of games were decided by 30 points or more. Twenty-five years earlier, in 1998, only 22.3% were decided by 30 or more points. Fans watching a region game in 1998 had nearly a one-third chance (31.7%) of seeing a game decided by 10 points or less. In 2022, that likelihood had dropped to 22.3%. Blowout games hurt attendance and thus revenue. They also provide less educational value for the student-athletes participating in them. Reducing the number of classes could exacerbate the problem. It will increase the number of region games and the mandatory routs that come with some of them. Larger regions also will mean larger enrollment discrepancies. Some administrators and coaches have suggested that the GHSA use each school's or individual sports team's track record to help classify. The goal would be to increase the number of competitive, meaningful games that every sports team and student-athlete experiences.