OHSAA Competitive Balance: Year One

SCOTT TRUXELL/independent sports editor

The 2017 Ohio high school fall sports season officially came to an end last weekend, with seven state football championship games taking place in Canton. Just one private school (Akron Archbishop Hoban) won a state title, while public schools won championships in the remaining six divisions.

Now, many fans of high school sports are wondering if the results are due to the Ohio High School Athletic Association’s new competitive balance rule.

In a nutshell, competitive balance uses a formula that takes into account factors such as residency, enrollment and open enrollment, and designated feeder schools for private schools. Those numbers are combined with sport specific multipliers for football, volleyball, soccer, basketball, baseball and softball, then used to assign each school to a division.

“State championships are won on the field or court,” Tim Stried, OHSAA Director of Communications said. “Competitive balance is simply a new way for schools to be placed into their postseason tournament division.”

“The OHSAA doesn’t look at it in terms of having a certain number of public or non-public schools winning state titles. In our eyes, they are all our member schools regardless of whether they are public or non-public.”

Background

Referendums to separate Ohio’s private and public schools for OHSAA postseason purposes were defeated in 1979 and 1993. In 2013, another vote to split the schools was called off and replaced with a competitive balance proposal that was voted down by the majority of member schools.

Two more revised proposals failed before a fourth one was approved in May of 2014.

Is competitive balance working?

Based on football results alone it’s easy to say yes, but Stried believes it’s too early to tell.

“It will take a few years to know the full effect of competitive balance,” Stried said. “It could just be a coincidence that 13 of the 14 schools in the 2017 football state championships (and semifinals) were public schools, or it could be the result of competitive balance, or it could be a combination of the two. We’ll know more after going through it for a few years. It’s important to also look at the other sports affected by competitive balance (soccer and volleyball in the fall) to see how that ended up.”

Two public schools – Versailles and New Bremen – won Division III and IV state volleyball titles, while two private schools – Cincinnati Ursuline Academy and Parma Padua won titles in Divisions I and II. In 2016, public schools won three of four state championships. In 2015, private schools captured three of four state championships and in 2014, public and private schools each won two state titles.

As far as soccer, public schools won two of three girls’ state titles, while private schools won two of three boys’ state titles. In 2015 and 2016, private schools captured all of OHSAA’s state soccer championships. In 2014, private schools won five of six state titles.

What’s the early word from OHSAA member schools?

“Competitive balance creates more work for school administrators and our staff, so we have heard that perspective, and we are constantly answering questions and looking into specific circumstances,” Stried said. “Overall. there is a positive response from our schools in that the OHSAA is trying to address the issues that our public school members brought to our attention as something that needed to be addressed.”

If necessary, changes could be made in the future

“There could be tweaks made to the competitive balance formula down the road,” Stied explained. “If the OHSAA believes that a change of some kind is needed, we’ll propose it to our member schools through the annual referendum voting process.”