Like 50-60 years ago though, right? Hard to believe they are the 2nd smallest school in the WPIAL though and its not helping that all their best athletes are getting Belle Vernon addresses.
Woodland Hills down to 3A enrollment?
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Like 50-60 years ago though, right? Hard to believe they are the 2nd smallest school in the WPIAL though and its not helping that all their best athletes are getting Belle Vernon addresses.
Its pretty simple actually. The highest 100 or so enrollments play 6A, next 100 play 5A, etc. It just so happens that Eastern PA has like all the 6A schools. They have 6A schools like District 7 has 1A schools. Every town out there is 6A.
That geographic alignment is almost perfect. They could figure out away to award the playoff spots that would be equitable. I don't like Gardner points but maybe they could use straight-up RPI for the last 4 spots or something like that. It would be kinda cool if they had RPI rankings for all the WPIAL teams regardless of class.
If they do status quo, I hope they cap the conferences at 6-7 teams. Each team needs 2 rivalry games at minimum and preferably 3.
It’s simplistic and not creative. There is no reason to have 5 schools in a class. And to your point, that’s also the reason that in WPIAL A, there may be 5 teams qualify for the PIAA playoffs out of district 7, whereas in the top class, only the champion qualifies. It’s the opposite in the East. All I’m saying is the PIAA can work a bit harder and figure out something a bit more equitable.
Honestly, I'm kinda for 6 classes. There is absolutely 0 reason as to why the WPIAL cannot combine classes in some way and determine its state rep by some other means. The WPIAL can have 4 classes if it wants.
Combine 5A and 6A
Combine 3A and 4A
Have a regular 16 team playoff. If a 6A beats a 5A team at Heinz, both advance. If 2 6A teams beat 2 5A teams in the semis, the 5A teams play a defacto 5A championship for the state bid. If there are 3 6A teams in the semis and 1 5A team, the 5A team gets the state bid. If there are 4 6A teams in the semis and they all beat 5A teams in the quarters, you can have a defacto 4 team 5A tournament the next 2 weeks.
So the creativity falls on the districts in your plan. That’s fair.
But that takes imagination which everyone knows you have, but no one in the district 7 office does. Lol.
Administrators nor coaches are bitching about the 6 classes. When the PIAA polls these groups they get resounding support. It's only the fans.
The PIAA's objective approach to classification isn't much different then Texas, Florida, Georgia, etc..
Face facts. Western pa has shrunk and few school districts merge.
It isn’t the PIAAs fault that there are very few large schools in the west.
It sounds like the east and west are two different worlds, it almost sounds like we shouldn't even be trying to have a state championship with them. Like maybe District 7 should be playing in Ohio's OHSAA. Of course the results from this year's state championships show that District 7 very easily can hang with the mega-districts of the east.
I don't really see the problem. The WPIAL can still have 4 classifications as I said but the coaches and AD's don't want it. They want 6.
I’m a coach and an administrator. I don’t complain about classifications either. My problem is inequities in classes that have only 5 teams because it works for one side of the state. And then you have 5-6 teams from single A sport earn state playoff spots while the highest classification earns 1 or 2. Do you know how bad the 5th best team in single A in any sport is, while a runner up in the highest class sits at home because of an injury or a PIAA ref doesn’t know a rule (which happens in every game). Lol.
From a state-wide perspective though, the 5th place 1A team is about equal to the 2nd place team from 6A, adjusting for enrollment. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. I mean of course NA would crush Mapletown in anything but Mapletown may be one of the best 32 1A teams in the state, whereas NA would not be one of the best 32 teams in 6A.
No point other than the state, lead by Bob Lombardi, is clueless as to the things that are best for the students and don’t have an open mind and desire to consider that their ideas are often not the right ones. There are too many things to discuss on this board.
again - the WPIAL coaches when polled favor the 6 classes as do the other districts.
How is this Bob's fault?
You have to be talking about other sports then football.
No WPIAL runner ups advance to the state tournament in football.
I think that's the point ... from a state-wide perspective maybe they are equal, but from a performance perspective they are not.
It is two different worlds. Having lived in Chester and Montco and Allegheny, I noticed that there are few similarities.
South Western PA is loaded with smaller high schools. Avon worth, Cornell, etc...don’t exist in the Philly metroplex.
The answer is simple.
If you don’t have the numbers you don’t compete in that class.
There is not any law or equitable argument requiring it.
That held true when we had 4 classes though. Obviously the 5th place finisher in the old Quad East was better than the some 2A interstate team.
Regarding your replies to me—yeah 6 classes are great. No argument from me. And Yeah I’m talking about all sports in general. Lombardi is a train wreck with way too much power.
Well, the reason we have different classes based on enrollment is due to fairness. We can argue if there should be 4 or 6 classes but can anyone really argue that the 5th place 1A basketball team deserves a PIAA bid any less than the 2nd place 6A team? The 1A school has 80 boys and is one of the better small schools in the state. The 6A school has 400 boys and is not one of the better large schools in the state. Its pretty simple.
I would argue that the 2nd (and maybe 3rd) best 6A schools in WPIAL are better than the two teams Mt. Lebanon played in the PIAA tournament prior to the finals with St. Joes.
I think mixing the classes in Western Pa is fine as suggested, but if there are say 6 teams in 6A for football, you are looking at 2-3 road games per year. If that means you have two games per year that are a 75 minute bus/car ride...is that really a big deal? Especially for football, where the games are played at night not right after school.
Probably but that's how the state playoffs is in all sports. You may have a nail biter in a WPIAL Final and then go play a farm team or mountain team who won their small district and beat them by 50
Actually a 5th place girls or boys team in certain sports is quite capable of winning a state title in the highest classification. The reason? Because they might be the 2nd place team in a stacked section and could actually be the best team in their district…but because their district doesn’t know how to draw up sections and/or seed the playoffs might slot that team behind section winners in garbage sections. It happens all the time because WPIAL has baseball coaches on soccer committees and swim coaches on volleyball committees. It’s an embarrassment.
case in point, a boys 5th place team in District 1 in a sport was playing for a PIAA title in Hershey’s championship game this year, while District 7 only qualifies 2 teams for the PIAA playoffs and the WPIAL 5th place team had already turned in their uniforms. . While anyone will say tough crap, and I get that, I’m just saying that the a district 7-5 team is just as good as a district 1-5 team, but a district 7-5 team will never get that opportunity while District 1-5 does.
