The state athletic association’s board of control on Wednesday voted to add a classification to Division II football, meaning there will be nine championships awarded beginning with the 2017-18 school year.
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The TSSAA’s Board of Control passed adding a third class by a 7-5 vote in Division II starting next school year in anticipation that the division will add more schools due to new rules being implemented next year. Schools with enrollments of 266 or less will play at the Class A level; enrollments larger than 530 will play at the AAA level, with those falling between at AA.
The TSSAA also changed how football will be divided in Division I. Starting in 2017, there will be six evenly divided classes. That will also take effect for the 2017-18 school year. Division II has been held on Thursday with Division I Class 1A, 3A and 5A on Friday and Class 2A, 4A and 6A on Saturday. “There is a very real possibility that we are going to have a lot of movement from Division 1 to Division 2”. Those schools have until October 14 to officially inform the TSSAA of their intentions to either move to D-II or remain in D-I. Schools may request to remove up or down in classes.
There will be two classes for all other D-II sports except bowling and wrestling, which will each have one class.
Division I volleyball (three classes) and Division I cross country, track and field, golf and tennis (two classes) also will be evenly split based on the number of participating schools.
“Instead the cutoff is set up to where we may have as many as 11 or as few as seven teams in our class, which means we’ll still have to travel across the state for league games and will likely have to look outside the state for nonleague games”. “We always had it there so schools wouldn’t be forced to move up more than one class”. The TSSAA’s Legislative Council past year redefined Division II as set up for any school that offers a financial assistance program. There will be two Division II classes in all other sports except wrestling and bowling, which will be one class.
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Additionally, Division I boys and girls soccer was expanded from two to three classes, with programs split evenly based on the number of participating schools in the sport.
