COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio High School Athletic Association executive director Doug Ute announced Wednesday he will make a proposal to the OHSAA board of directors Thursday to amend General Sports Regulation 17, which determines how many tournament divisions should be used for each sanctioned sport.
The proposal follows months of discussion with the board and six recent regional meetings with member schools in each of the OHSAA’s athletic districts.
The board has its regularly scheduled meeting at 8 a.m. Thursday in Columbus. The board could approve all, none or certain parts of the proposal. It could also delay all or parts of the proposal to a future meeting. For any parts of the proposal that are approved, the board will also determine the year of implementation.
The proposal affects the sports of soccer, girls volleyball, basketball, softball and baseball.
“This proposal finally addresses the enrollment disparity in Division I and Division II, where the largest schools are sometimes three times larger than the smaller schools in the same division,” Ute said in a statement. “We anticipate expanding the number of divisions will be a revenue-neutral change, so this is not driven by money. We will certainly need to restructure the tournaments and add host sites, etc., which will take time and work by our staff, district athletic boards and member schools."
The board will continue to discuss additional sports, noting several recent meetings regarding track and field.
"Ohio is the fourth-largest state in our country in terms of the number of schools, but in many cases, our number of divisions don’t reflect that size compared to smaller states,” Ute said in a statement. “Any time you can give more kids the opportunity to have a postseason tournament run and get their communities engaged and excited, that’s a good thing, and we don’t believe that having more state champions waters down the significance of winning a championship."
Ute said the proposal is membership-driven.
"The majority of the feedback we received from the regional meetings that we just completed was positive about expansion," Ute said.
The proposal does not include any expansion to the football postseason, which is already at seven divisions. In addition, any changes to the current deployment of the competitive balance process would need to be voted upon by OHSAA member schools during the annual referendum voting process.
Each year, the board of directors would still have final authority in determining how many divisions to be used that school year, but the proposal calls for the following scale to be used to guide the board’s decision on the number of divisions for girls volleyball, football, soccer, basketball, softball and baseball, however note that the sports of lacrosse, field hockey, ice hockey and boys volleyball would not change from their current division numbers:
- 199 or fewer teams: 1 Division
- 200 to 299 teams: 2 Divisions
- 300 to 399 teams: 3 Divisions
- 400 to 499 teams: 4 Divisions
- 500 to 599 teams: 5 Divisions
- 600 to 699 teams: 6 Divisions
- 700 and more teams: 7 Divisions
For girls volleyball, soccer, basketball, softball and baseball, the largest 64 schools would be placed into Division I. The next largest 64 schools would be placed into Division II. The remaining schools would be divided as evenly as possible into the remaining divisions. The OHSAA already does something similar to this in football, in which the largest 10% of schools are placed into Division I and the remaining schools are divided evenly in Divisions II through VII.
The proposal does not call for a change to the formula that the OHSAA uses for individual sports to determine the number of student-athletes required for team designation, which includes five in bowling, five in cross country (who score for their team at the district tournament), four in golf, three in girls gymnastics, seven in swimming and diving, four in tennis, nine in track and field and seven in wrestling.
The proposal calls for the following number of divisions to be used for individual sports:
- 200 or fewer teams: 1 Division
- 201 to 450 teams: 2 Divisions
- 451 to 700 teams: 3 Divisions
- 701 and more teams: 4 Divisions
Discussions regarding the increase in the number of tournament divisions have been in the works for quite some time. The OHSAA held virtual and in-person meetings throughout the state regarding the proposal.
Ute announced Dec. 13 the expansion study of the seven competitive balance sports.
Ute, who started as executive director in September 2020, has received feedback from administrators and coaches about the potential expansion of divisions in order to address concerns in the enrollment disparity of the teams from the top to the bottom of the larger divisions.
"We have seven tournament divisions in the sport of football, so why not give student-athletes, schools and their communities the same, or at least comparable, opportunities to compete for a state championship in some of our other sports," Ute wrote in a December memo to member schools.
OHSAA staff members and the board of directors met in late June 2023 to begin discussions of the expansion of tournament divisions.
The OHSAA has studied the number of tournament divisions and formats in other states and has found that several states — including many that have fewer member schools — have more tournament divisions than Ohio.
Besides the sport of football, the OHSAA has not had expansion in some of its traditional four-division sports since the late 1980s.
Expansion would not mean playing more tournament contests overall. It simply would be putting the same number of teams into more divisions.
Currently, more than 200 schools enter the postseason tournament in some divisions to compete for a state championship.
The December memo cited an enrollment disparity in Division I in the sports of baseball, basketball, soccer, softball and girls volleyball.
The board of directors heard proposals that addressed the enrollment disparity between the schools at the top to the bottom of Division I in 2006 and 2019.
The only modification the OHSAA currently has in place addressing that issue is in football, where Division I is comprised of the top 10% of schools based on enrollment and the other six divisions are divided as evenly as possible.
The OHSAA has 819 member high schools this school year.
