There’s likely to be some closure soon in the competitive balance debate in South Carolina for high school athletics.
The S.C. High School League’s executive committee is expected to vote Wednesday on which model to approve in an effort to help level the playing field for high school athletics in the state. That decision will come in an era where charter and private schools are having greater success in sports in the smallest S.C. classifications, a development that has fueled fair play and competition concerns from traditional schools.
The SCHSL executive committee listened to six different proposals on the matter last week. Those ideas were trimmed down from 12 discussed by the league’s competitive balance committee that met over the past two months.
According to sources close to the situation, the two proposals that have most traction are (1) an out-of-zone multiplier and (2) a multi-factors reclassification model.
If a plan gets approved Wednesday, it will go into effect for the 2024-25 school year. It will also factor into the biannual realignment process that’ll wrap up soon and take effect for the 2024-26 school year.
Realignment happens in South Carolina every two years and is historically the league’s primary way to level the competitive playing field among schools. The process can move teams up or down in classification based on enrollment changes.
The SCHSL’s 2024-26 realignment plan will go to member schools in December. Schools then have until January to submit any appeals. A finalized realignment will be completed sometime in January.
“If we have a proposal that is legal and we should pursue, that will give the realignment committee a better idea to go forward with realignment,” SCHSL executive committee chairman Jason Warren said at last week’s meeting.
About the two plans believed to have the most support:
? In the out-of-zone multiplier plan, SCHSL staff would use the 45-day enrollment data for students in grades 9-11 to order to rank schools from largest to smallest. The league staff would add a multiplier of three for each student who lives outside of that school’s assigned attendance zone.
Based on the discussions from last week’s meeting, the multiplier would get capped or have a ceiling at 1,300 (which is in roughly the middle of the Class 4A). There was sentiment expressed during last week’s executive committee meeting that leaders don’t want schools moving up more than two classifications.
An out-of-zone multiplier would apply to all schools, not just the league’s charter and private members.
? The multi-factors proposal would be based on a formula using scores from four different elements: school enrollment and location (ie, near a big city), as well as poverty level of the student population and an out-of-attendance score.
The out-of-zone multiplier would be easier to calculate and explain, according to those familiar with the decision-making process. While the multi-factors proposal has a lot of merit, there are a lot of moving parts that would make it more difficult to manage.
There’s also a chance that no plan gets approved Wednesday. But based on how much traction this topic has had over the last few months — and with the upcoming realignment nearing its deadline — it seems unlikely that the competitive balance issue gets tabled for the next year or so.
“I’m not going to be in favor with the status quo,” SCHSL committee member JR Green said at last week’s meeting. “... If we are going to make adjustments, just get the fact that there will be consequences.”
The league’s subcommittee is one of three similar efforts currently dealing with the hot-button issue of competitive balance among South Carolina high school athletics.
All of those efforts have at least some intent of discussing solutions for concerns about imbalance and competition in the state’s Class A and 2A classifications, where charter and private schools have had an arguably disproportionate amount of success in winning state championships in recent years.
This fall, private or charter schools won state titles in Class A and 2A girls volleyball, Class A and 2A girls tennis, Class A and 2A boys cross country and Class A, 4A girls cross country, Class 3A boys and girls swimming, and Class 4A boys volleyball, which was a championship sanctioned sport for the first time with just two classifications.
In addition to the competitive balance items, other items that will be discussed Wednesday include Mountain View Prep applying for membership into the SCHSL. Mountain View Prep is a charter school that will officially open for the the 2024-25 school year.
Mountain View will have a sports focus similar to Gray Collegiate and Oceanside Collegiate, two of the most successful charter schools that compete in Class 2A in state athletics competition.
As of the last realignment for 2022-23, there were 15 charter schools and four privates that were SCHSL members, with at least three more charters approved or seeking membership since then.
This story was originally published November 14, 2023, 1:51 PM.
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