City of Basketball Love

Michael Bullock (@thebullp_n) &
Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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In a surprising turn of events, the PIAA has voted to expand the number of classes in high school basketball from four to six.

The classification change vote, which won’t be implemented until the next school year, was originally focused around football, but the Board of Directors decided to alter the number of classes for boys and girls basketball, baseball, softball, volleyball, lacrosse and more.

Robert B. Coleman, the District 12 chairman, and Michael B. Hawkins moved and seconded the motion to suspend protocol and vote on expanding the number of classifications beyond merely the football vote. Hawkins is District 12’s vice chairman.

A third reading on the matter at hand — in this particular case, the other sports’ expansion — would typically be held before a Board vote. By suspending protocol after two readings and voting, that ostensibly gives PIAA much more time to work on logistical matters.

Logistical matters such as collecting member schools’ revised enrollment figures, incorporating the 10 percent rule adopted earlier this year and, ultimately, splitting Pennsylvania basketball into six equal slices of the pie sometime just before Thanksgiving.

The “10 percent rule” means public schools need to include merely 10 percent of their non-traditional students — home school, cyber school, charter school, magnet school, technology and alternative school — when determining enrollments for classification purposes.

Schools will have the option to play up in classification, but those decisions won’t be finalized until the middle of December. Brackets for the expanded tournament will arrive early next year.

“We listened to our member schools and they wanted to see even more schools, communities and student-athletes play in the postseason,” PIAA executive director Dr. Robert Lombardi told CoBL.

“The Board reacted to that.”

Others have reacted in numerous ways to the news flowing out of Mechanicsburg.

“I was following the football stuff and knew they might increase classification as far as six class, but I did not know that any other sport like basketball was in play,” said Archbishop Carroll head coach Paul Romanczuk, whose school has made runs in the AAA bracket the last few years.

Romanczuk’s reaction was a common one among coaches who were just hearing the news.

“Wow, six? That’s big news,” said Phoenixville coach Eric Burnett, whose school is one of the smallest in the current AAAA classification. “I hadn’t heard anything about that. Wow.

“I like being in the bigger schools, in District 1 AAAA this year, we moved from AAA to AAAA because we wanted to take that on and play in the bigger schools,” he continued.

Catholic League chair and Archbishop Wood athletic director Joe Sette was one of the few not caught off guard by the vote, which came 23-7 in favor after the football measure passed 26-4. But he said it’s too soon to know exactly what the vote will mean for Catholic League schools and schools across the state in general.

“It’s hard to say, simply because all of the schools have just entered their enrollment numbers in,” he said. “Until we see how our schools are broken down, it’s hard to give you an answer on that. We’ll just have to see when they go through the process and how different schools are slotted.”

The decision is likely to have a big impact on District 1, which has 56 current AAAA schools in the region, 10 of whom qualify for the state AAAA tournament each year. District 12 has 19 AAAA schools, 24 AAA and AA schools, and 16 Class A schools.

Last year, Philadelphia teams swept the four state championships: Constitution (A), Conwell-Egan (AA), Neumann-Goretti (AAA) and Roman Catholic (AAAA).

District 3 also will be impacted significantly, especially at the big-school level. Of the programs currently in Class AAAA, 16 schools have fewer than 500 boys.

“My general reaction without knowing the specifics of how it will affect us, looking at the whole landscape, knowing the numbers and who’s where and what and making a judgment based on that, my initial reaction is total excitement,” Hershey head coach Paul Blackburn said.

“Just because I think there’s a disparity in the AAAA that’s huge. I think there’s a disparity in others that really stands out for basketball. And I think that’s going to help. Now, I don’t know what [Class] AAAAAA is going to look like, who would be up there and how many and the percentage and things like that. I don’t know where we would be.

“I would assume we wouldn’t be a AAAAAA,” continued Blackburn, referring to Hershey’s enrollment (486). Possibly a AAAA I would think.”

Blackburn, however, offered another perspective.

“I think you have six champions. I think that’s neat. I think we’ve been in a system that’s been around for a while,” Blackburn added, referring to a four-class array that’s been in place since the 1983-84 school year. “I think it’s time for a change.”

Pennsylvania won’t be the only state in the region that has six classes; New Jersey also has six divisions, though four are for public schools and two are for non-public (i.e., parochial) schools.

“I don’t live that world in Jersey but I would think that they probably have less complaints over there because they keep classifications separate, and then at the end of the year there’s that tournament of champions,” Romanczuk said. “That’s something I’d like to see them take a look at here in Pennsylvania, but that’s way above my pay grade.”