Competitive Balance...What's Next?

[hawkeyepierce]

Did anyone notice that the entire DIII State Final bracket was made up of selective enrollment schools? Ten of the 16 teams were selective enrollment, did you notice that? But yet, private, parochial, or selective enrollment schools make up less than one-fourth of the total school population. Therefore, what's next?

Discuss.

[4thgoal]

This new proposal makes it nearly impossible to estimate what the impact would be. It does not have the "tradition" or "socioeconomic" factors like some previous versions. I do like the fact that it takes into account only kids on the roster for a particular sport, instead of just impacting the boys or girls count for the school across the board regardless of how many kids were actually athletes.

http://www.ohsaa.org/news/2014-03-19Com ... mation.pdf

[McArthur General]

In my opinion, they have to do something. Small hometown schools have no chance at success at the regional or state level as long as the playing field is uneven.

[G.W.A.]

In my opinion, they have to do something. Small hometown schools have no chance at success at the regional or state level as long as the playing field is uneven.

Agree. Money wins at every level from pros to high school.

[wipala]

In Arizona we have this so-called " open enrollment". Well you can figure rather quickly what schools will be
Dominating next year in football, basketball and baseball. Our playoffs are based on power points within a region, not all schools go to tourney and play one and done. A school that is a high seed can lose in what we call regional and still
Advance to state. As stated the ma and pa schools are playing for pride. The solution would be be to tighten the open enrollment. Jmo

[G.W.A.]

In Arizona we have this so-called " open enrollment". Well you can figure rather quickly what schools will be
Dominating next year in football, basketball and baseball. Our playoffs are based on power points within a region, not all schools go to tourney and play one and done. A school that is a high seed can lose in what we call regional and still
Advance to state. As stated the ma and pa schools are playing for pride. The solution would be be to tighten the open enrollment. Jmo

Open enrollment is not the problem, it is however the only chance most schools have at winning a state title in southeastern ohio. example: SW and Oak Hill and i dont blame them at all and more schools should do this

[trojandave]

In this day and age of high school basketball, you have to fight fire with fire. If a transfer situation is legal, then I have no problem with it. There are scores of schools around the state who have benefitted greatly from transfers, which is a reality not just in the basketball sense, but also in the mobility of today's society. Not all transfers come in because of basketball, though.......there are some who change districts due to family job displacement or to acclimate to a more settled social situation. I know in Portsmouth we have had a few kids over the last few years who came in not because of basketball reasons, but because of the situations that I have just mentioned. They happened to be good basketball players, so it seemed to some like they came because of basketball, when in actuality it was not.

Larger communities are naturally going to have greater movement of families in and out, while smaller communities tend to be more stable, attracting fewer new residents. The demographics of having a homegrown team are probably more unrealistic in a larger size city than in a rural town. At Portsmouth, we have had over the course of my 40 years of following the Trojans a number of kids who moved in and out who were basketball players, and as a result PHS at times benefitted with the few who moved in, while those who moved out went to other schools and had very good careers. It's just not realistic to think that over the course of several decades that a community such as Portsmouth is always going to have a homegrown team, with no movement of population whatsoever. Our 1961, 1978, and 1988 state championship teams were all homegrown to my knowledge (also 1931 most likely), but I can remember some other teams that benefitted from move-ins, and other teams that lost some good talent.

[4thgoal]

In this new proposal, situations like trojandave mentioned about kids moving into the district for various reasons will penalize schools. I think this could have a significant impact on some local schools based on the current divisional breakdowns, but those would likely change once this formula is calculated. Portsmouth for example, with a current enrollment of 187 could be pushed over the D2 line of 213 if they would have 3 open enrollment basketball players and 3 others who haven't continuously attended Portsmouth since 7th grade. I wonder if this formula could change the way coaches look at their roster and who makes the team?

Consider this example:
If you were a basketball coach and you knew you were close to moving up a division and you had 2 players who never hardly saw the floor the previous year, but they were open enrollment and had moved in during 8th grade, thus impacting your team enrollment by 10, would you keep them on the roster? What if you had another player who had just moved to your school because of a family situation and the new move in player was 6'6" and had been a great player at his previous school....would you keep the 2 kids who barely saw the floor the previous 2 seasons?

I hope this wouldn't happen, but in reality, it likely will happen at some schools who are close to moving up a division. Of course there is a lot of uncertainty in where the cutoff will be each year and your roster for each season impacts your enrollment number for the following season.

[Hardwood]

I think in this day and age you can forget about teams playing with only home grown athletes. Even the little schools now days have move ins. While some transfer for other reasons besides sports most don't. When you have kids that play AAU ball together and one happens to transfer to the other ones school. When you have kids living in one school district and going to another school district a few miles away. I guess we would all have to be pretty naïve to think sports has nothing to do with it. I see it going on in our little county here in Meigs all the time. Southern, Eastern and Meigs have all had players switch schools and I would guess sports was a big part of it. I can't think players from Jackson and Oak Hill switching schools isn't sports related. The same with schools in the Fairland, Ironton, Portsmouth, Wheelersburg, Chesapeake area. I guess my thinking is why would you go to a school a few miles down the road from your own district that is about the same academically if sports aren't involved? I have seen several players jump back and forth between schools. Good luck finding a school that has kids go to grade school all the way up through together.

[rockbiter]

I don't pretend to know what the solution is. I wish I did. all I know is that I went to see two small schools (from the local area) play. Both Leesburg Fairfield and Peebles were outstanding teams. Both played their hearts out. But, both were eliminated by selective enrollment schools from Columbus. All selective enrollment schools should be playing in their own tournament. But, I doubt if that ever happens. I'm getting too old to watch this crazy game, anyhow.