The Illinois High School Association Board of Directors approved a pair of recommendations, at its regularly scheduled meeting June 13, that make significant changes to the association's multiplier waiver policy and classification policy.
The board had been reviewing potential changes to both throughout the 2010-11 school year.
The changes to the classification system stemmed from the need to address imbalances in the number of schools in each class in several sports and activities and the fact that those imbalances might be increased as schools affected by the multiplier waiver move to a different class.
In years past, most sports and activities used the same set of enrollment cutoffs. In 2011-12, each sport and activity will have its own set of cutoffs.
An obvious imbalance can be seen in the 2010-11 entries for boys golf. A total of 503 teams competed. Using the standard three-class enrollment cutoff (775 students), nearly half of the schools (245) were assigned to Class 1A. Only 111 schools were assigned to Class 2A, and 147 were assigned to Class 3A. Other examples of imbalanced classes include boys track (271-143-168), girls track (267-143-165) and girls soccer (95-133-160).
“Our board looked at and discussed a number of different options for classification cutoffs,” said IHSA director Marty Hickman. "Some felt the most logical option might be simply cutting things squarely, for example, having 25 percent of the schools in each class for four-class sports. In the end, the new percentages keep the cutoffs closer to the current system while distributing the entries more evenly than in the past.”
The most notable change comes in boys basketball, as the enrollment cutoff for 1A drops to 274. With that change, Chester and Trico will compete in 2A come postseason time.
Chester was hit the hardest and will move up to Class 2A in baseball, boys and girls basketball, softball and volleyball.
Trico, on the other hand, will just move up in boys basketball and volleyball. The rest of the local schools will stay in the same classes for all of its sports.
The new multiplier waiver policy adopted by the IHSA board establishes criteria for an automatic waiver of the multiplier in individual sports and activities, taking into account each program's advancement in IHSA tournaments over the previous six years. Previously, a school had to apply for and receive a waiver that covered all of its sports and activity programs.
“We have been studying the impact and effectiveness of the multiplier since its inception in 2005,” said Hickman. “Over the years, we have seen a number of instances where the multiplier has been overly punitive to some programs, resulting in lopsided outcomes in postseason contests. Now we have four years' worth of data since the class expansion that occurred in 2007-08, and we felt that we could address some of the inadequacies in the system.”
The multiplier, which was first implemented in the fall of 2005, multiplies a member school's enrollment by 1.65 to determine the class it will compete in during IHSA postseason tournaments. The multiplier applies to all non-boundary schools.
For schools that are subject to the multiplier, the new policy grants an automatic waiver to any sport or activity program that, as a team, has accomplished none of the following over the last six school terms: won a state tournament trophy, qualified for the state final tournament, won a sectional, won a regional two or more times, finished second or third in the sectional two or more times (track and field only) won a first-round playoff game (football only), or finished in the top 10 in the state sweepstakes (music only).
“Our previous waiver policy was well thought out, but it simply turned out to be too conservative,” said Hickman. “There have been a number of compelling cases around the state where one highly successful team at a school or a few highly successful individuals have prevented all the other teams from that school from being able to receive the multiplier waiver. Our board felt the right thing to do was to change the waiver policy and give these student-athletes the chance to compete on more equitable ground. There is no doubt that this is one of the biggest changes the IHSA has undertaken in some time.”