Fort Scott, Uniontown unaffected by new KSHSAA classes

Saturday, September 29, 2018

The Kansas State High School Activities Association released classifications for all sports other than football Wednesday morning with the new classification system that’s come into effect beginning this school year. This system reflects the most radical change in the way schools are classified since the expansion from five classes to six in 1978-79.

Fort Scott and Uniontown remain in the same classes as last season while Northeast moves down to Class 2A due to the changes.

Classes 6A, 5A and 4A now have 36 schools each. In the past, 6A and 5A had 32 teams while Class 4A had 64 with some sports divided into two divisions of 32 schools each.

Classes 3A and 2A still have 64 schools each while Class 1A has the remaining 117 member schools and no longer has a two-division format.

There are also changes in how sports are classified when there are fewer than the minimum needed for each class to stay separate, such as girls’ tennis and girls’ golf in the fall.

Football classes currently in effect were determined last season and remain in effect next season.

Because of all the shuffling in classes, only one school in the top three classes moved from a higher class to a lower one. Wichita Northwest moved from Class 6A to Class 5A.

Locally, Fort Scott remains a Class 4A school as do six of the seven members of the Southeast Kansas League. Pittsburg is in Class 5A, tied with Hays for the 31st-largest enrollment in the class with 837 students.

Fort Scott is now the second-largest school in the SEK and tied for eighth-largest in 4A along with Kansas City-Piper, each with 596 students. Ottawa and Bishop Miege are tied for the highest enrollment among 4A schools with 679 students each.

Independence is 11th-largest in Class 4A with 566 students followed by Chanute in 12th with 558. Coffeyville is 19th with 484 followed by Labette County in 20th with 477.

Parsons has managed to stay in Class 4A with an enrollment of 336 students, 139 fewer than LCHS and seventh-smallest in the class.

As far as Three Rivers League schools go, the enrollment shuffling means that none of its members are in Class 3A any more. Jayhawk-Linn, Southeast and Northeast all move down. Jayhawk-Linn is the largest TRL school and fourth-largest in Class 2A with 168 students. Southeast is eighth with 165 and Northeast is 25th with 146.

Uniontown has 139 students, the same number as Colgan, which is the smallest school in the CNC League by 79 students. They are tied for 32nd-largest enrollment. Pleasanton has 133 students, tied with Lawrence Bishop Seabury, Olathe Heritage Christian and Smith Center. Yates Center has 122 students and Oswego is tied with a Western Kansas school, Wichita County, as the smallest school in 2A with 105.

The TRL’s remaining five schools are in Class 1A. Marmaton Valley has 80 students followed by Chetopa with 73, St. Paul 69, Altoona-Midway 58, and Crest 55.

The largest school in Kansas is Wichita East with 2,462. Six schools have enrollments of 2,000 or more. The smallest is Healy with 14. It is the only school with fewer than 20 students but another eight have 30 or fewer and a total of 30 have fewer than 50.

Another change in the way schools are classified affects sports where the lower classes usually have to combine due to a lack of schools in each of the lower classes. In the past, the schools in each class would have been combined into one class and that class would have been called “Class 3-2-1A” in tennis, as an example.

Now in these sports, the classes with adequate number of schools (usually at least 24) to have its own championship are uneffected. But any classes with fewer than that number are combined, then split into two classes on a 40/60 bases. When combining the classes, the 40 largest are placed in the higher class and the 60 smallest into the lower one.

Girls’ tennis and girls’ golf, the first two sports to have their Regional assignments released, provide examples of how this works. For tennis, Class 6A has 34 schools and Class 5A has 32, so each will have their own post-season tournaments without a need to be combined with another class.

Class 4A has 24 schools playing girls’ tennis. Classes 3A, 2A and 1A combined have 51 and none of the three have enough to conduct their own post-season tournaments. These 75 schools are combined and then split with 40 percent classified as Class 4A and 60 percent as Class 3-2-1A. That’s 30 schools in 4A and 45 in 3-2-1-A.

Fort Scott will be at a Class 4A Regional at Bishop Miege on Saturday, Oct. 6 along with host Miege, Atchison, Baldwin, Marysvile, Ottawa, Topeka Hayden and Wamego. Marysville is a Class 3A school which has been “bumped-up” to Class 4A under this 40/60 rule. Columbus, Clay Center, Concordia and Lindsborg-Smoky Valley and Wichita Collegiate are also Class 3A schools which got the bump-up.

Fort Scott’s golf team will also see a bumped-up Class 3A school in their Oct. 8 Class 4A Regional at Independence. Labette County, Chanute, Anderson County, Independence, Parsons and Class 3A bump-up Girard will be in the field. Clay Center, Concordia and Horton also got the bump-up in girls’ golf under the 40/60 split rule. This is because only 22 Class 4A schools have girls’ golf and 42 have teams in 3A, 2A and 1A combined.

This means that Girard is a Class 3A school except in girls’ golf, where it’s a 4A school. And Columbus is a Class 3A school in every sport including girls’ golf but is Class 4A in girls’ tennis.

Uniontown, meanwhile, will play in Frontenac’s Class 3-2-1A Girls’ Golf Regional at Pittsburg’s Crestwood Country Club on Oct. 8. The other schools there will be Baxter Springs, Caney Valley, Columbus, Erie, Eureka, Fredonia, Frontenac, Galena, and Colgan. If the new 40/60 rule had not been created, Girard would be in this tournament instead of the 4A Regional at Independence.

Other effects of the new classification system include:

• — Depending on how the KSHSAA assigns schools, Fort Scott could be playing in a five-team volleyball Sub-State in late October. With 36 in each class, there will be four 5-team and four 4-team Sub-States in late October.

• — Regionals return in Class 1A volleyball and basketball because of the sheer number of teams. The five TRL schools will be playing in Regionals on October 16 with the top two teams advancing to Sub-States that will be held on October 20. The Regionals will have six to seven schools each. The Regional champion and its runner-up will be assigned to different four-team Sub-States. During basketball season, this means that a school’s girls’ and boys’ teams could end up in different Sub-States. Also in basketball, in order to get the Regional round in, the regular season ends one week earlier for the Class 1A schools. That means that schools who have been dropped to 1A when maybe they didn’t expect that may have to reschedule one or two games.

• — Wrestling will be affected by the 40/60 rule. How is not known yet, but it could be possible that some Class 3A schools could see themselves assigned to Class 4A for wrestling.

* - Soccer Regionals will likely not look any different. Classes 4A through 1A are already combined and 6A and 5A each have enough teams for stand-alone post-season tournaments.

• — Cross country is not likely to be affected as all six classes have been holding their own State championships for several years.