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Topic: Ohio High Schools vote for "competitive balance"

Topic: Ohio High Schools vote for "competitive balance"

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Alan Swank
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Member Since: 12/11/2004
Location: Athens, OH
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Ohio High Schools vote for "competitive balance"

Posted: 5/17/2014 9:18:12 AM

Saw this in today's Dispatch. Kind of disappointed that the trophy for everyone syndrome continues to spread.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/sports/2014/05/16...

Robert Fox
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Location: Knoxville, TN
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RE: Ohio High Schools vote for "competitive balance"

Posted: 5/17/2014 9:50:52 AM

I assume this is about leveling the playing field, especially among privates vs. publics. That's a big issue in Tennessee, and I would assume Ohio as well. Tennessee has several private schools that have become football power houses and the public school fans don't like it.

The publics believe the privates take advantage of "recruiting," and are able to field highly competitive athletic teams, while the publics are mostly limited to the kids in their district. (This is not altogether true, but that's the gist.)

There seems to be no easy fix. The most common suggestion is to separate the privates and the publics all-together.

Again, I'm assuming that's the same basic issue with Ohio.

Brian Smith (No, not that one)
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RE: Ohio High Schools vote for "competitive balance"

Posted: 5/17/2014 10:43:23 AM

This plan is much more workable than the past plans, which would've punished teams for being successful...even schools that didn't recruit.

Midwest Athletic Conference schools in my area, where classes stay together K through 12 and hardly anyone transfers into the districts, wins state title after state title due to great coaching and completely coachable kids. (See: Jordan Thompson). Well, and in the case of football, giant farm kids who like to knock the snot out of people. And yet the competitive balance proposals would've bumped them up a division simply because they win championships. Even the private school n the conference,, Delphos St. John's, stays within the borders of its school district for the most part.

The past plans were punitive towards hard-earned success. And that's BS.

Thankfully the OHSAA made this version a little more sane.

Jeff McKinney
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RE: Ohio High Schools vote for "competitive balance"

Posted: 5/17/2014 2:21:50 PM

I agree with Delete Pending on this.

Alan, I'm not viewing this as a "trophies for everyone" type plan. I agree with you that the trend toward everyone getting a trophy is maddening and not healthy. I don't think this rule promotes that, though.

It sounds like a reasonable method of determining an adjusted "school enrollment" figure that takes into account private school recruiting outside their areas.

Lande71
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RE: Ohio High Schools vote for "competitive balance"

Posted: 5/18/2014 8:13:41 AM

Alan, How about the example of Cleveland St. Joe, once a Div. 1 powerhouse with alumni like Clark Kellogg, competing now at Div. 4 with the same type of roster from the old days? I believe they had guys at 6-10, 6-8, 6-8 etc. this year. Should they feel good about their trophy competing against the little guys? When they played at the state tourney this yr. - it brought out lots of college coaches because there were several being recruited Div. I college. It is that type of situation that hopefully gets remedied!

Alan Swank
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RE: Ohio High Schools vote for "competitive balance"

Posted: 5/18/2014 10:31:22 AM

Lande71 wrote:

Alan, How about the example of Cleveland St. Joe, once a Div. 1 powerhouse with alumni like Clark Kellogg, competing now at Div. 4 with the same type of roster from the old days? I believe they had guys at 6-10, 6-8, 6-8 etc. this year. Should they feel good about their trophy competing against the little guys? When they played at the state tourney this yr. - it brought out lots of college coaches because there were several being recruited Div. I college. It is that type of situation that hopefully gets remedied!

You make some good points but first let's get the facts right. VASJ competed at the D 3 level this year not D 4 and was one of the smallest D 3 schools in the state. They had 122 boys for the official count. This rule would not affect them in the least even if every boy on the team counted as a 2. The only teams that this will affect are those that are just below the cut off for their division. Additionally it does nothing for the disparity between the smallest D 1 schools and the largest. If I'm a parent of a student and depending where we live, sending my child to one of these "powerhouses" might be their best educational option. On the flip side, with these crazy contracts that teachers in the Cincinnati and Cleveland dioceses are being forced to sign, I couldn't with a clear conscious send my kid to those schools either (but that's another thread for another time).

It will be interesting to see how this plays out but my gut feeling is that it will change very little in terms of the teams that play for the state championships every year.

http://www.ohsaa.org/members/sptdivis13.htm

Last Edited: 5/18/2014 10:32:47 AM by Alan Swank

Lande71
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RE: Ohio High Schools vote for "competitive balance"

Posted: 5/18/2014 12:09:06 PM

Alan, you may be right about St. Joe being in D 3 last year, but the year before they were D4 beating Leipsic, I believe in the finals. You may also be right that it may change little. Might be why it passed this time. We have a school in our league that has 360 open enrollment students as a D4 school. It will surely bump them to D3.

Alan Swank
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Location: Athens, OH
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RE: Ohio High Schools vote for "competitive balance"

Posted: 5/18/2014 1:28:31 PM

Lande71 wrote:

Alan, you may be right about St. Joe being in D 3 last year, but the year before they were D4 beating Leipsic, I believe in the finals. You may also be right that it may change little. Might be why it passed this time. We have a school in our league that has 360 open enrollment students as a D4 school. It will surely bump them to D3.

Lande that tells me something - either the school with that many open enrollment students is a very fine school or the schools that those students are coming from aren't so fine. When you say 360, is that at the high school level or district wide?

Lande71
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RE: Ohio High Schools vote for "competitive balance"

Posted: 5/18/2014 6:53:00 PM

Alan - Can't tell you what grade levels that 360 number spans. I can tell you it was in the newspaper twice in articles re: the newly approved system and how it would bump them up to D3. Without open enrollment numbers, I can tell you that the school would definitely have less than 700 students K-12. It is a typical small school in NW Ohio.

UpSan Bobcat
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Location: Upper Sandusky, OH
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RE: Ohio High Schools vote for "competitive balance"

Posted: 5/18/2014 9:39:55 PM

I think most schools in the state have agreed for a long time that something needed to change but no one could come up with an idea that enough would agree to. I'm with Alan that I think this formula will have minimal impact. But the OHSAA has said it would be a good starting point and if it turns out true that hardly any teams move up or down, the formula can be modified. I personally was glad to see that it passed.

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