MECHANICSBURG — The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association is closer to increasing the number of classifications from four to six for high school football.
Also, it is entertaining the idea of expansion in other sports.
At a joint meeting of the Strategic Planning Committee and the Football Steering Committee on Wednesday, a recommendation was approved by an 18-9 vote to restructure the classification system that has been in place since the start of the PIAA football playoffs in 1988.
Both committees agreed the best approach is an equal division of schools for six classifications. That eliminated another proposal that offered six classifications with the sixth being a “Super Class” for schools with male enrollments greater than 700.
The recommendation will be made to the PIAA Board of Directors at its Oct. 7 meeting. There, the proposal will be on its third and final reading. The Board of Directors can either approve the recommendation, or table it for further discussion.
Schools will also be submitting enrollment numbers for classification for the next two-year cycle in late October.
“I think this proves that good ideas will be and should be considered for discussion and that an open dialogue and a lot of hard work is very important,” PIAA Executive Director Robert Lombardi said. “It’s important that this association also listen to the wishes of its membership.”
Proposals for change were the brainstorm of Bob Tonkin, a representative of District 9, with three being brought to the attention for review for the first time in December.
Several meetings have been held leading up to this point, and other proposals were weeded out through the voting process.
“I think all of this has been thoroughly vetted,” Lombardi said.
A collateral change in policy was also addressed for football. In order to tackle the issue of shortening the season, districts can either agree to play a nine-game schedule with two preseason scrimmages or a 10-game schedule with one preseason scrimmage.
The Board of Directors can act on this modification on a first reading basis, or suspend protocol and accept so to expedite the process so the membership can move
forward with scheduling for the next two-year cycle.
District 11 chairman Bob Hartman said the decision would be “up to the leagues. We would determine when playoffs start.”
District 11 football chairman Jason Zimmerman of Northwestern Lehigh said most of the schools surveyed on the matter favored six classes and a 10-game format.
“Through surveying our schools, Bob and I both voted in favor of six classes because the overwhelming majority of our schools were in favor of it,” Zimmerman said via email Wednesday night. “Additionally, the same survey told us that our schools prefer we maintain qualifiers and allow our leagues to decide whether they want 10 games and one scrimmage or 9 games and 12 scrimmages.
“In speaking with representative coaches from all the leagues, many feel the second scrimmage is really only used to get a look at their 2s and 3s. They aren’t playing their best kids to avoid injury prior to the first game and they certainly aren’t showing anything that may give their Week 1 opponent any more scouting material than they already have.”
District 2 is in favor of the 10-game, one-scrimmage format, according to representative Mike Ognosky, who is on the Football Steering Committee.
“Overwhelmingly, our district would agree to maintaining a 10-game schedule, because that will allow us to keep our playoff format,” Ognosky said. “It would still create new subregional playoffs that our smaller classifications would be involved in, but in our larger ones, it would add an additional round to our playoffs.
“That would create more opportunities for our teams to reach the playoffs and that is what our district supports.”
Also, with change on the horizon for football, the next step will be examining the possibility of expansion in basketball, baseball and softball.
“This is something that the committees are going to look at very carefully,” Lombardi said.