SCPrepTalk

Well today was the 45 day count across the state. I imagine the numbers will be made public from the SCDE by mid-November maybe at the latest. I'm sure school admins and the SCHSL will know them prior but will be very curious to see what those numbers are with today being the day.

The issue is always the SCHSL "adjustments" to the raw ADM count. (Charter schools, freshman academies, new schools....) The HSL count is always different. I won't start drawing new maps until I see their numbers.

...and what do you do with Carolina Forest? A big 5A school in a sea of 4A/3A. In the last realignment the answer was to extend 5A down to capture Conway, St. James, Socastee and South Florence to form a 5A region in the north-east corner of the state.

If Horry County SD pulled their heads out of their *** and adjusted their attendance lines they could have 6 schools in a single class. (North Myrtle Beach, Myrtle Beach, Socastee, St James, Carolina Forest and Conway) But for some reason they've decided that Carolina Forest should be the regional 500 lb gorilla.

Grab your popcorn, this will likely be one of the most (if not the most) contentious realignments in SCHSL history. What to do with private/charter schools, fixing the mess that is 1A (don't even know if that's possible), fixing some wonky geography in some regions (Abbeville should not be playing Silver Bluff for example) and as usual schools getting bumped up or down. I know there was a big stir last year with some schools and their placement; Greenwood not wanting to be in 5A, Union County staying AAA, Stall begging to be bumped up to 5A (crazy but I sorta understand), Dixie appealing and winning the appeal to stay in 1A, Lewisville appealing and not winning the appeal to stay in 1A all come to mind. No doubt we will have more of these instances. I guarantee this, the first proposed alignment that is released will definitely not be the final one.

The 1A problem is because we added 5A and bumped too many teams up which leaves a very small amount of teams left.

too many 5A but not sure of the solution. Use to be the biggest 16 in the top division, now relatively equal numbers of 5A, 4A, 3A, and 2A.

bottom half of 5A struggles in football against the bigger schools. Other sports they can compete

problem is that people want an across the board solution when in reality, football should be treated and classified differently than the other sports

There’s no perfect solution but after tweaking for years the one we scraped in favor of 5A was the best we had. It was fair to the majority. I understand a couple of bubble teams might feel like it’s not fair but it was the best solution for most everyone. With 5A too many teams are at a disadvantage.

Tigerific wrote:There’s no perfect solution but after tweaking for years the one we scraped in favor of 5A was the best we had. It was fair to the majority. I understand a couple of bubble teams might feel like it’s not fair but it was the best solution for most everyone. With 5A too many teams are at a disadvantage.

agree with you there, no perfect solution

in football, numbers matter a little more than in other sports. The big 5A schools will always dominate in football over the small 5A schools with a few exceptions or pockets of talent (Berkeley, G'Wood)

I like the current classifications (5 classes divided almost equally) for all sports other than football. In football, take the top 20 and put them in their own classification, then divide the rest equally

then the problem becomes the regions and the region finish determining the playoff seeds, so you have to go back to the points system which personally I liked, but not all do.

I wish they would look at a model similar to the California system where they have 4 classifications based on attendance size and a open division. It was interesting Schools like De La Salle that have just under 1100 students compete against schools that have 4000 in the open division. Yes DLS is a private school but with the charter schools that focus on athletics springing up in the state this could solve a lot of issues.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_C ... _champions

The problem with a small amount of teams in a class is regions. You have to make split regions then which is exactly what we had with D1 and D2. It’s going to eventually end up just like what we had but call it 5A.