As a means to give more student-athletes state championship experiences, the Ohio High School Athletic Association announced Thursday that its board unanimously approved the addition of divisions for several high school sports.
As reported by Spectrum News 1, girls' and boys' soccer will now have five divisions instead of three. Boys' and girls' basketball, girls' volleyball, softball and baseball will expand to seven divisions. Divisions I and II will only include 64 schools for those sports.
Jeff Cassella, the athletic director at Mentor High School, said the expansion is the right step.
“It’s going to give more kids opportunities to play in big games, which is always the point of what we try to do,” he said.
Meanwhile, Joe D’Amato, the athletic director for Cleveland Heights High School, is concerned how these changes may affect his school’s sports.
“Assuming we stay in Division I in all those sports we definitely have our work cut out for us,” he said, as reported by Katie Priefer.
D’Amato said that he is still digesting the announcement.
“Obviously they were looking to make the enrollment smaller in terms of expanding divisions, but like again if you look at some of the largest schools in Division 1 like them and us there’s, in some sports, there’s a thousand, like a thousand males difference or a thousand females difference, like that’s still a really large discrepancy,” he said.
Cassella doesn’t believe that these changes will affect his school too much, but they will affect the playoffs.
“It’s just going to be a change of how our teams operate and think about the post season, because you’re going to have less games to get to that state final, and we’re probably going to have a little bit more opportunity,” he said.
The OHSAAA said the expansion will go into effect this fall, At a later date, the association will announce structural and date changes for state tournaments.
