OHSAA adds seventh football division

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Ohio High School Ath­letic Asso­ci­a­tion will be adding a sev­enth tour­na­ment divi­sion in foot­ball begin­ning in 2013, OHSAA Com­mis­sioner Daniel B. Ross announced Thurs­day in a press release.

A pro­posal was approved by the OHSAA’s Board of Direc­tors by a 6 to 3 vote dur­ing its reg­u­larly sched­uled meet­ing on Thursday.

The plan will place the top 10 per­cent of schools based on enroll­ment in Divi­sion I, with the remain­ing 644 schools divided evenly among the next six divi­sions. Each of the seven divi­sions will con­tinue to qual­ify 32 teams to the tour­na­ment. Cur­rently, the six OHSAA foot­ball divi­sions are com­prised of an aver­age of 120 schools per division.

The plan for adopt­ing an addi­tional divi­sion was in response to a con­cern by some OHSAA mem­ber schools about the enroll­ment dis­par­ity that exists in Divi­sion I, where the cur­rent range is 494 males at the lower end of the divi­sion to 1,164 at the top.

“Adding a sev­enth divi­sion not only helps address the enroll­ment dis­par­ity in Divi­sion I, but it also will cre­ate 32 more tour­na­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for student-athletes, their schools and their com­mu­ni­ties, many of which have never or rarely expe­ri­enced the play­offs,” Ross said. “The com­mit­tee mem­bers believe that this is an issue unique to foot­ball, espe­cially since not all schools qual­ify for the OHSAA foot­ball tournament.”

Though a new two-year cycle for reas­sign­ing schools to tour­na­ment divi­sions begins in the fall of 2013, based on cur­rent enroll­ment fig­ures from 2010, three of the five high schools in The Gazette’s cov­er­age area would change divi­sions start­ing in 2013.

Belle­vue would drop from Divi­sion III to IV, Seneca East from Divi­sion V to VI and Mon­roeville from VI to VII, the newest divi­sion in the OHSAA. Clyde would remain in III, while Mar­garetta would stay in V.

A sep­a­rate com­mit­tee, com­prised of OHSAA Board and staff mem­bers, school admin­is­tra­tors and offi­cers of the Ohio High School Foot­ball Coaches Asso­ci­a­tion, will be formed to final­ize the details of this plan.

Among the details to be deter­mined: adjust­ments to the Harbin Com­puter Rat­ings with the addi­tion of another divi­sion; regional break­downs and assign­ments for Divi­sion I, and dates in which spe­cific divi­sions will play their tour­na­ment con­tests, includ­ing logis­tics of an addi­tional state tour­na­ment contest.

Posted by Brad Frank on Apr 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.