Just to take a quick break from the XC analysis I've been posting... here are some thoughts on the upcoming WIAA Reclassification cycle. Important dates: Enrollment counts are provided to the schools on Nov. 25, the deadline to declare intent to Opt-up is Jan. 10, and the WIAA board will finalize the classifications on Jan. 26.
There are three notable amendments come into effect for the first time this cycle:
With the first amendment, the WIAA is returning to a standard enrollment cut-off for each classification instead of repeating the attempts at ensuring there are the same number of schools in every classification - the benefit of this is that there will be less bouncing between classifications, and schools can better plan on whether they want to opt-up to a different league or not (because they'll have a much better idea of whether they would be placed in, say, 2A/3A/4A instead of having to wait until the opting-up process is already underway). This is a VERY good move IMO, because the downsides are pretty minimal (some classes some years might end up with, say, 72-75 schools and others 55-60, but that isn't far off from how it has been where you could see 68 schools in one class and 56 in another which happened 10-14 years ago despite the WIAA's attempts at balancing out the numbers).
In addition, to mitigate the potential imbalance in the number of schools, the WIAA will expand/contract that State field accordingly: 69-83 teams in a classification would result in a 20-team state field (a possibility for 3A some years, but not any other classification), 53-68 schools (which will be almost all of the classifications in any given cycle) would result in a 16-team field as it has been, and 37-52 schools would result in a 12-team field (which would be rare, but might happen in 4A or 1A depending on how many schools opt-up).
With the second amendment, the WIAA will for the first time take into account the socio-economic situation of schools - something that Oregon started doing several years ago now. The basic of this amendment is that the enrollment count is reduced by the % above the state average of Reduced/Free Lunch students in the school (with a maximum of 40%), e.g. using Eisenhower as an example, their enrollment count in 2016 was 1616.49 and 73.6% of their students qualified for the Reduced/Free lunch program while the state average was 46.2%, that means the enrollment count of 1616.49 would be multiplied by 82.6% (100% - 27.4% over the state average) to result in an enrollment count of 1173.57. Schools can NOT drop more than 1 classification due to this rule, though I only know of one school that would be close to doing so (Sunnyside, which isn't too far above the 4A cut-off and almost maxes out the reduction).
The third amendment was almost clutch in re-balancing the state: 1A-4A schools can now petition the WIAA to opt down in football only. This amendment would have been better IMO if the 1A-4A schools also had the option to opt-up in football only, just as the 1B/2B schools are allowed to do. The reason why I think that would be of benefit is that Football is the only sport where potentially qualifying for the state level depends on a very small amount of games (1 a week in football, vs. sometimes 2 games a week in basketball/baseball) against league members within your own classification. This significantly limits the viability of split-class leagues, which are very reasonable in every sport except football and allows vastly more flexibility in whether schools need to opt-up or stay where their enrollment places them. The biggest potential use of this amendment could occur in the CBBN this year: only Wenatchee and Moses Lake are expected to remain 4A by adjust enrollment due to the aforementioned socio-economic amendment. If the rest of CBBN chose to settle in 3A rather than everyone opt up to 4A (like we see with the 3A Metro League schools in Seattle every cycle), and Wenatchee and Moses Lake were allowed to compete in 3A for football only, it would solve the issue of having a split class and allow the Yakima schools to compete in 3A where they would be far more competitive than they have been in 4A (more on this in an upcoming post).
With the totality of those amendments, and the changing landscape as new schools open up or shrink/grow in size, there are 3 key things to keep an eye on.
First: Should the 4A NPSL teams continue to opt-up to 4A, or should some drop to 3A as they will be placed?
Second: Should the 4A CBBN teams opt-up to stay in 4A, or should they drop to 3A en masse?
Third: Should the 3A Metro League members all remain in 3A, or should (the non-private school) half of the league drop to 2A and have a split-class league instead and allow those programs to be much more competitive at the state level?
I don't expect #3 to happen (though it would be good for those schools IMO, so long as they continue as a split-class league). #2 will be interesting, though I am not convinced it will happen. #1 is one that IMO absolutely should happen, but who knows if it will. Again, more on that in a soon-to-come post.
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