AHSAA RULES: Is competitive balance creating fairness or false equality?
The 2021 Montgomery Academy boys tennis team won the Class 6A state championship despite an enrollment equivalent of a 2A program. (Contributed)
By TIM GAYLE
There’s no way to know what the Alabama High School Athletic Association framers had in mind when they crafted legislation that would penalize successful private high school programs by moving them up in classification, but this certainly wasn’t it.
In boy’s tennis, the Competitive Balance Factor took the private schools and spread them into different classifications, giving Montgomery Academy a 6A championship over perennial power Mountain Brook while making Madison Academy the 4A-5A champ and Houston Academy the 1A-3A champion.
In girl’s soccer, St. Paul’s Episcopal won the 6A title, followed by rivals Montgomery Academy in 4A-5A and Trinity in 1A-3A.
Suddenly, instead of having mid-level private schools dominating 3A, they were spread out and taking over championships in every classification.
“Who won 4A? A private school. Who won 5A? A private school,” Montgomery Academy athletic director Robert Johnson said. “If there was no Competitive Balance, they’d just win 3A and a public school would win 4A and a public school would win 5A. They’re not accomplishing what they want to accomplish, they’re actually making it more difficult.”
What is Competitive Balance?
Just what is Competitive Balance? More to the point, what is the purpose of Competitive Balance?
“To me, the definition of competitive balance is making the competition even or balanced across the board,” St. James athletic director Katie Barton said. “If that’s the definition of competitive balance, then I wish that it would be applied to all schools, if that rule is going to be around. I’m not saying the rule should be around or shouldn’t be around -- I don’t have an opinion on that -- but if it’s going to be around, what’s the difference between a 6A public school winning, winning, winning, year after year after year, and them not bumping up versus a 4A private school?”
Of the 30 private schools located in Class 2A or above (which means those that have been elevated artificially by the private school multiplier of 1.35 installed in 1999), all but five will be affected in some sport by the Competitive Balance Factor in the new classification for 2022-23 and 2023-24. But whenever students and their parents visit a private school on a perspective visit, they’re never told that they may have to compete in a classification system far above their public school peers at schools of similar size.
“They almost don’t know anything about the actual rules of what’s legal,” Catholic athletic director Daniel Veres said. “They don’t know anything about the fact that we get counted as 1.35. They don’t know anything about Competitive Balance. Nobody knows about that. The average Joe has no idea about what the heck is going on.
“We’re in 5A in cross country because we had Amaris Tyynismaa and Isabelle Cochran (winning championships) and they’ve both graduated. Now we’re running 5A and we’re not competing for anything.”
New classifications coming for next four years
The Central Board of the Alabama High School Athletic Association will meet early this week to vote on the new classification system for cross country, football and volleyball for the next two years. It’s almost certain they will consider the number of teams in each classification as they look over computer-generated models for 2022-23 and 2023-24, but it’s just as certain that any discussion on how the private schools are affected by Competitive Balance Factor will be muted at best, ignored at worst.
It’s the elephant in the room that needs to be discussed. As CBF prepares for its third AHSAA classification, there are three elements that raise the ire of any private school athletic director: the definition of success, the ability to move back down to your original classification and the uneven distribution of the rule.
How do you measure success in a sport? For AHSAA officials, any private school team that advances to the quarterfinals of the state playoffs earns a point, while semifinal finishers earn two points and finalists earn four. If your sport doesn’t have traditional playoff rounds, such as tennis, you qualify for quarterfinal points with a top-eight finish, semifinal points with a top-four finish and finalist points if you place in the top two.
Coed sports -- basketball, soccer, tennis and track and field -- have a different point system based on the results of both boys’ and girls’ programs.
“I think it would be better if points were based off of winning championships,” Catholic athletic director Daniel Veres said. “Just doing OK in the playoffs shouldn’t make you move up in classification.
“St. James (in volleyball) is kind of the poster for this. They did win that (4A title) one time, then they’ve just done OK. It so happened that they moved up to 5A and 5A around here is weak, so they make it far enough (in the playoffs) and now they’re 6A.”
“Our boy’s soccer is going to move up to 6A, but they haven’t won any state championships,” Johnson noted. “I have no idea why that has to be the case.”
The Montgomery Academy boys’ soccer team is being penalized at the expense of the girls’ soccer program, which is a perennial championship contender. The Prattville Christian Academy boys’ basketball program is in a similar situation -- the possibility of moving up because of a successful girls’ program -- but PCA coach Jason Roberson, who coaches both programs, doesn’t fret about the possibility.
“We’re just happy to be a part of the Alabama High School Athletic Association and if that’s the rule, that’s the rule and we’ll go play whoever we can play,” Roberson said. “Depending on who’s in 3A and who’s in 4A, you can make the case that 4A is easier. We’re not worried about that.”
CBF creates other issues for athletic programs
Of course, Roberson doesn’t have to budget for the Competitive Balance Factor. Trinity athletic director Jessica Lassiter discovered that the Wildcats’ tennis teams, bumped up to 6A by the Competitive Balance Factor, now play area rivals that force the squad to travel long distances, a hardship AHSAA officials normally try to avoid when placing schools in regions.
“Our tennis teams have to travel farther for area play than, say, a volleyball team has to travel,” Lassiter said. “They’re playing up three classifications. And your boys’ team may be super good, but your girls’ team has to travel with them (to higher classifications). And, right now, our girls aren’t ready in tennis to compete at the 6A level.
“At that level, too, you just have more resources. We can get the resources, but we have to work harder to get them.”
Of the top 30 private schools competing in the Alabama High School Athletic Association, 25 of them already compete at a higher level because of the 1.35 multiplier installed in 1999, which counts every private school student as 1.35 people.
“I don’t understand why private schools are doubly penalized,” Johnson said. “If the Competitive Balance was for everybody, it would make a little more sense. To be a 2A school and then you’re 3A, then you start winning and the next thing you know we’re going to have some (sports) in 7A, that’s just crazy. That’s the biggest thing, the double penalty. They need to do away with one of them.
“We either need to make Competitive Balance for everybody or we don’t need that private school (multiplier) penalty any more. Get rid of that and let Competitive Balance take care of the rest. Make Competitive Balance for everybody, if that’s what they want. I don’t like Competitive Balance. I don’t like penalizing winners.”
For Catholic, the football program will be moved up by Competitive Balance, the cross country team is already competing in 5A and four other sports are on the verge of moving up. With enrollment hovering between 3A and 4A, the Knights made the conscious decision to move up to 4A to avoid the CBF penalty (which is based on the points accumulated in the original, or 3A, classification).
“I call that the UMS-Wright method,” said Veres, referring to the Mobile private school that made the same decision to move up via enrollment. “Last year, there were almost 100 kids less in our whole system than we were when I first started here. This year, we’re going to be at 760, 770. We’ve got 60 more kids in our school than we had last year. Our elementary school has gotten a lot bigger. In high school, we may have 15 more kids.”
Private school athletic directors could probably tolerate Competitive Balance if the minimum threshold was lower -- less than one point in single sports, less than two points in coed sports. In other words, a single sport such as football can reach the second round of the playoffs in two consecutive years (or the third round in one year after failing to make the postseason in the other year) and will remain at its elevated CBF classification despite the fact that the team is not very competitive.
“It does make it harder to come back down because you don’t have to go very far (in the postseason) to start earning those points,” Veres said. “You earn a half a point (in the first year) and a half a point (in the second year) and you stay, but have you really had any success? It’s not like you have to win the second-round game, you just have to win a first-round game. You haven’t competed for any kind of a championship.”
Teams moving up in football for first time
In football, only Mobile Christian was elevated this last classification period and will return to 3A next year, but four other programs (including Catholic and Montgomery Academy) will be elevated one class in 2022-23 and 2023-24. In volleyball, 10 private schools were artificially bumped in the last classification system. Four of those earned enough points to climb another classification, while four others earned enough points to stay in the elevated classification. Only Athens Bible and Faith Academy will be allowed to drop back to their respective classifications in 2022-23 and 2023-24.
“It’s unfortunate because the only way to drop back to the classification that you should be at is for the program to basically disintegrate,” Barton said. “And that’s not fair to the kids. That’s what high school sports is for, it’s the kids. I have a daughter who is in the seventh grade who will probably never, ever, ever play competitively in volleyball against the classification that she should. We have a good volleyball program but we had four years where we had these freshmen -- nine of them, I think -- and eight of them had been there since the first or second grade. We capitalized on those nine girls -- and there were others in other grades -- and for four years straight we played for a state title, winning one of the four.
“If you’re going to keep the Competitive Balance and it’s only going to be applied to one spectrum, the private schools, then maybe we need to take a look at what you do competitively and why you have to stay in that classification.”
In cross country, a coed sport, a minimum threshold of two points (i.e., one for boys, one for girls) keeps a CBF-affected program elevated. Nine private school cross-country programs were bumped up at least one classification in the last two-year cycle. One program, 5A St. Paul’s Episcopal, earned enough points for another bump but is already competing at the 7A level. All nine programs will stay in their higher classification, unable to drop because of the lack of teams competing in the sport.
“If you get moved up in football and you win two playoff games in that two-year cycle, then you stay there,” Johnson said. “That’s too hard of a deal. If you’re a state championship 3A football team, you should be able to win two playoff games in two years at the 4A level. Matter of fact, 3A has been better than 4A the last couple of years. So you’re probably going to win those two games, so you can’t go back down. You’re just stuck.”
The frustration endured by private school athletic directors starts with a lack of input in Competitive Balance Factor, a rule that was considered flawed before it was ever implemented. It places a second penalty on a certain group of AHSAA members based on their success while ignoring the success of others who have similar advantages, such as school systems who pour all of their funds into one high school the way a private school system does.
Two of those schools were on display in the Class 6A girls’ state tennis tournament this past May. Mountain Brook, a former 7A public school program that had dropped to 6A based on enrollment, was mauling everyone in the tournament and ran away with the state championship by scoring 83 points. Montgomery Academy, a 2A school based on enrollment but boosted to 3A by the 1.35 multiplier and to 6A by Competitive Balance, finished a distant second with 43 points, but because of a successful boys’ program, has already accumulated enough points in Competitive Balance Factor to move up to 7A with the next classification.
AHSAA officials would have a difficult time explaining the competitive balance that accompanies that decision.
When former AHSAA executive director Steve Savarese discussed the implementation of Competitive Balance Factor, he mentioned that future studies would determine whether the rule should apply to all AHSAA member schools. That is one scenario that would placate private school athletic directors. But when the Central Board meets to discuss the new fall sports classification, it’s doubtful the subject will be raised.
“I appreciate the AHSAA, I appreciate being a part of their association, I appreciate their leadership,” Barton said. “I do think the Competitive Balance could be applied to both sides.”