Pittsburg goes back to 5A

The Kansas State High School Activities Association (KSHSAA) announced its reclassification of member schools on its web site, www.kshsaa.org, Thursday afternoon.

The KSHSAA reclassifies its member schools every year for sports other than football using enrollment numbers in grades 10-12. It reclassifies football every two years using numbers in grades 9-11.

Pittsburg moves back up into Class 5A in both counts after spending the last football cycle and last school year in Class 4A. PHS reported 553 students in grades 10-12 and 591 in grades 9-11. Pittsburg is the only school moving up from 4A to 5A in either count. Bishop Miege drops down from 5A to 4A in football while Ottawa drops in all other sports.

All other Southeast Kansas League schools remain in Class 4A. Coffeyville's enrollment appears to have been affected by the summer's floods as its 10-12 head count was just 381 students. Last year, Coffeyville reported 449 students in those grades. Coffeyville's football number, however, is 444 students.

With Pittsburg going back up to 5A and Southeast-Cherokee going back to 3A in football, districts will have to be regrouped. But how districts will be restructured is not expected to be announced until Wednesday at the earliest.

Jayhawk-Linn remains in Class 3A, reporting 135 students in football and 142 in all other activities. Both numbers make it the smallest school in the new Frontier League, which has three Class 3A and three 4A schools in each count.

Uniontown has 120 students in the football count while Pleasanton has 106, which is six over the maximum allowed for an eight-man football-playing school. This means Pleasanton will remain an 11-man school the next two seasons.

Oswego has 101 students for football but this will leave only it, Pleasanton and Uniontown playing 11-man football in the Three Rivers League. That will essentially make those schools independent in football the next two years. All three will play in Class 2-1A.

Class 2-1A will have only 52 schools playing football, which means that as many as 12 of the new districts will have just three teams. With Northeast-Arma dropping down to Class 2-1A, it's possible that the usual pairing of Uniontown and Pittsburg Colgan in the same district may come to an end, unless the state decides that this should be one of the districts that will have four schools.

Uniontown is the largest school in the TRL with Jayhawk-Linn's departure for the Pioneer. It's count for grades 10-12 is 115 students. Pleasanton's is 106. That puts both schools in class 2A.

Regional assignments have been determined for all fall sports other than football and soccer. Tennis begins post-season play first with Regionals on Thursday. Golf comes next with Regional tournaments Monday.

Soccer Regionals are drawn from a pool of teams at the end of the season.

For more information, log on to www.kshsaa.org. Classification information is available on the home page. A .pdf viewer, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, is required to see the information.

Class Sizes

Enrollment numbers for schools in the Southeast Kansas, Pioneer and Three Rivers leagues.

SOUTHEAST KANSAS LEAGUE

PIONEER LEAGUE

THREE RIVERS LEAGUE

OTHER INFORMATION

NOTES -- Football numbers use enrollments in grades 9-11 and are effective for two years beginning with the 2008 football season. All other sports use enrollments in grades 10-12 and are effective for the 2007-08 school year only.

There are 35 schools with enrollments over 1,000 for football and 33 such schools for all other sports.

In football, there are five 11-man classes with classes 2A and 1A combined and two eight-man football classes. A school can only opt to play eight-man football if its enrollment is 100 students or less. In all other sports, there are six classes with lower classes combined if there are not enough schools playing a particular sport.

Source: www.kshsaa.org.