GHSA votes to separate Class A public, private schools for playoffs and championships
By S. Thomas Coleman
For the AJC
MACON — The landscape of high school athletics in Georgia took an unprecedented turn on Tuesday when the executive committee of the Georgia High School Association voted overwhelmingly to hold separate public and private school playoffs and championships in all Class A sports, beginning this fall.
The resolution, which was introduced by Charlton County athletic director Jesse Crews, passed by a vote of 37-12, with one abstention. The result will be two, 16-team tournaments – one for public schools and one for private schools — that should keep more than 30 of Georgia’s smaller high schools from leaving the GHSA and forming their own sports league. Representatives from those schools believed there has been a competitive imbalance between public and private schools at the Class A level because of private schools’ ability to accept any student without geographic restriction.
The GHSA’s recently approved region assignments will remain in place because they had been approved prior to Tuesday’s vote, which means public and private schools will continue to compete against each other during the regular season.
GHSA officials said they will meet with various members in upcoming months to best figure out how to seed the 16-team brackets. Ralph Swearngin, executive director of the GHSA, said the process will be developed by the schools that are directly impacted by the vote, with a March timeline. It is unclear whether the public and private Class A champions will play a plus-one game when the five other classifications play for titles at the Georgia Dome in December.
“I think we have enough good minds [within the GHSA] to figure it out,” Swearngin said.
Tuesday’s vote apparently ends the movement to create the Georgia Public Schools Association. That group, which was attracting interest from more than 40 small, mostly rural, schools, held its last meeting on Monday. More than 83 representatives in the room were asked to cast ballots by Jan. 24 on what their schools planned to do in response to whatever the GHSA voted to do on Tuesday. The choices were commit to pull out of the GHSA and join the GPSA, stay in the GHSA or remain undecided.
Wilcox County principal Chad Davis, a leader in the movement, was prepared to vote for seceding from the GHSA. He seemed relieved that his school will not have to.
“I don’t think that there is the need for [the GPSA] now,” Davis said. “That’s my personal opinion, but we’re going to check with other schools that were involved in the process in the next few weeks.
“I’m very surprised by the [GHSA] vote,” he said. “I didn’t think they would do anything.”
Judging by the three-to-one margin of the vote and pleas from several executive committee members to preserve the current membership makeup of the GHSA, it appears as if the GPSA movement had a significant impact.
“I don’t think of this as a victory,” Davis said. “I’m just pleased.”
“[The vote] was a little stronger than I thought it would be,” Swearngin said. “I think there are a variety of reasons why people voted how they did. I think the pleas for unity being in the best interest of everyone was a factor.”
One such vote came from Albert “Pat” Blenke, a Georgia Department of Education Administrator who sits on the GHSA executive committee. During the meeting, he said: “This is one of the biggest decisions we have to make as an organization. Eventually, the state legislators are going to get tired of hearing the complaints from their constituents, and they will do something. And as sure as I’m standing here, whatever they do will not be beneficial to the schools.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” Blenke said.
But after the vote he added, “Every decision you make is going to have unintended consequences.”
Others expressed concern over the vote, as well.
“Our biggest thing is we feel the GHSA is one of the top four high school associations in the nation, and I think we just made ourselves weaker. The best should play the best,” said Eagle’s Landing Christian Academy athletic director Scott Queen, who voted no. “We want to compete against the Lincoln County’s and the Clinch County’s, even though we haven’t beaten them yet. I just think this is going to be very hard to pull off.”
Buford athletic director Dexter Wood cast a “no” vote as well, which was aimed at the process, more than the resolution.
“My chief point of contention is that as an executive committee member we’re seeing this [proposal] for the first time and we’re being asked to make such a huge decision,” Wood said. “I would like to have had more time.”
Wood is also concerned that the next “target” will be single-city school districts with one high school, similar to Buford and Calhoun. Those schools have begun to come under fire for their ability to attract county students and allow them to enroll for a minimal amount of tuition – usually around $200 per month.
“It seems to be that the time has come where we are trying to level the playing field everywhere, and that’s such a relative matter,” Wood said. “There are definite differences between private schools and a city high school.”
AJC staff writer Michael Carvell contributed to this story.
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417 comments Add your comment
GHSA Stripes
January 10th, 2012
3:06 pm
This is for all sports. Public schools in Class A only have 10 soccer teams which is not enough to meet the mandatory 16 teams to have a state championship. RS thinks that more schools may add sports due to the division.
coughsalot
January 10th, 2012
3:09 pm
This is just a continuation of the sense of entitlement that’s sweeping across our country. Get something for nothing. Who really wants to be the “state champion” of group of about 40 schools? You’re not a state champion, you’re just going to be the best out of a small, watered down group of schools. And, Class A Public Schools, you’ll still have the same sense of inferiority that you have now only it will be worse because you’ll always wonder if you truely are the best. You’ll know in the backs of your minds that there’s another champion out there and you’ll always wonder “maybe we were good enough to beat them too”…only now you won’t get the chance to find out.
Lucky Dawg
January 10th, 2012
3:10 pm
I agree with Reality Check. The little girls at Wilcox and Terrell and all the other piss@nt A schools couldn’t compete with private schools so they had to beg for a rule change. And if private schools really recruited as much as those little girls thought they did, they would never lose a game.
Dontavius Supremo
January 10th, 2012
3:12 pm
PURE jealousy and stupidity.
Idiot's Delight
January 10th, 2012
3:13 pm
In other words, if you canlt beat them, don’t play them. Bright.
Lumpkin
January 10th, 2012
3:14 pm
Should be a big gain for the GISA
tbia
January 10th, 2012
3:15 pm
I think they should just have bowl games.
justafan
January 10th, 2012
3:15 pm
This is a start for the GHSA to make strides in the right direction! THANK YOU!
CrαZy
January 10th, 2012
3:16 pm
Lumpkin… I don’t know the GISA mighht lose some members now that the GHSA has split. A few of those schools would benifit from less travel by joining the GHSA.
Legend of Len Barker
January 10th, 2012
3:17 pm
The schools and the GHSA haven’t quite figured things out. Yes, there is recruiting at some private schools, but yes there is recruiting at some public schools and in all classifications. Recruiting at schools has existed since schools and athletes started taking sports seriously. Colleges were recruiting professional athletes in the 1890s, Georgia Tech might have used crooked referees in a few games in the same decade and Georgia had a mini-scandal over using non-enrolled students in the early 1900s (especially because they still didn’t win).
The biggest problem is one the GHSA and nature can’t fix: money.
Whereas things were more equal in the 1950s because we all essentially had podunk high schools, except for maybe Avondale, they’re not now (and Avondale has dropped off the map). You had a bunch of skinny boys playing football and girls’ sports were dominated by the schools that took it seriously. The only professional athletes in the state were a bunch of young minor league baseball players. [Obligatory joke that there weren't any professional athletes in the state until the mid-1980s. 1990s for the Braves.]
Then Atlanta became a hot place to live. Athletes stayed and raised their equally athletic kids here. Metro Atlanta boomed and people with money who took their athletics seriously moved in. Gwinnett got rich. Collins Hill got Maya Moore. Girls’ athletics were now taken seriously in all areas.
Down outside the metro, these things were happening. Every other metro area got poorer. No athletes moved there with their equally athletic kids. Your Jeff Davises, Seminole Counties, Thomsons and Talbotton Centrals still have the same corn-fed athletes they had 30 years ago. The world’s the same.
Throw in that no media broadcasts full games that aren’t from the metro and that even further polarizes the playing field. GPB takes it a step further and only broadcasts big schools from the metro. ESPN likes Gwinnett. Charlton and Clinch may be one of the hottest tickets in south Georgia, but neither exist at any points north of McRae.
They used to say there are two Georgias: metro areas and everyone else. There are currently about four Georgias: Metro Atlanta, other metropolitan areas in other parts of the state (excluding Albany), non-metro north Georgia, and non-metro south Georgia (including Albany). Four completely different worlds. There is some crossover and occasionally the latter two actually win a title, but it’s not the same universe that it was in 1990 which was huge change from 1960 which was a huge change from 1930.
coughsalot
January 10th, 2012
3:18 pm
How much fun will it be to be the Class A Public school state champion in soccer or volleyball. You’ll have a state tournament that will have about 4 teams in it.
CrαZy
January 10th, 2012
3:19 pm
Class A Georgia High Achool Athletics: where we start to prepare kids for a long life full of handouts and government assistance.
tardawg
January 10th, 2012
3:20 pm
Why don’t the private schools have their own league, like they use too?It used to be called the GISA or something like that.
Glad/Smiling
January 10th, 2012
3:24 pm
AMEN !!! Finally, an attempt,to level the playing field. The controversy over private vs. public has finnally caused this vote and reaction by GHSA.
Yes, have a private and a public league. This may result in such. At least there will be “separate” champions.
It will be interesting to see if some private A schools now, and in near future, move to class AA. Oh, the GSHA should have gone a little further and included a separate champion for AA private and public.
slobberknocker
January 10th, 2012
3:26 pm
Why stop at Class A? Have separate private and public school playoffs for all Classifications. Everyone knows that private schools have a distinct advantage when it comes to fielding sports teams. No district lines to worry about, their own private stadiums for a real home field advantage, and deep pocket alumni to fund all sorts of athletic endeavours, all create an unequal playing field. Murphy was on the right track when he applied the 1.5 multiplier to private school enrollment. He should have made it 2.0.
Sav'h dawg
January 10th, 2012
3:28 pm
Enter your comments here
S. Thomas Coleman
January 10th, 2012
3:29 pm
Thanks for all the responses. Here are a couple of answers to some of the issues you’ve all raised:
– The new rule is for Class A ONLY, and is in place for ALL sports.
– The new rule will go into effect in August. That means yes, this past season will be the last one for a while in which public and private schools in Class A compete against each other in the post season.
– There are currently 32 private schools and 45 public schools in Class A that compete in football. Sixteen teams from each group will make the playoffs and have their own tournament.
– Regions 1 (11 teams) and 2 (8 teams) are made up of all public schools. Region 5 (7 teams) is made up of all private schools. Region 8 (10 teams) is made up of all private schools except for two — Commerce and Lincoln County.
– No determination has been made yet on how long this rule will be used or if it will be brought up for reconsideration every two years like region alignment. However, given the threat of losing upwards of 20-30 schools from Class A, this rule will probably be in place for a while.
– I’ll try to get a list of voters and how they voted.
– “City schools” like Buford and Calhoun could be targeted next. Buford athletic director Dexter Wood (proudly sporting his Bama baseball cap at the meeting) expresses his thoughts on that in the story. Check it out when it goes live on ajc.com and in the newspaper tomorrow.
Thanks again for reading! Stay tuned!
S. Thomas Coleman
s.thomascoleman@yahoo.com
CrαZy
January 10th, 2012
3:30 pm
The GHSA should go to 7 classes where the single A privates are in AA and the publics are in A. B/C I’ll always think less of the A public champ than the A private champ. The A public’s are the ones running away from the fight with there junk tucked between their legs!! Maybe that’s what we can call the A public class the Junk tuckers!!
billy
January 10th, 2012
3:31 pm
Public Schools – 1 Private Schools – 0 This is the first of many defeats
billy
January 10th, 2012
3:32 pm
Major victory today for public schools. Congrats you out coached them
THE MAJOR
January 10th, 2012
3:33 pm
Why doesn’t the GISA just disband and join Class A GHSA? This is foolish, for years all the public schools said the private can’t beat us and now they are. Public schools man up!
sav'h dawg
January 10th, 2012
3:35 pm
All this started when (Legendary) Coach Larry Campbell lost to Coach Donald Chumley’s Savannah Christian Raiders for the 3rd consecutive time. Savannah Christian ran the gauntlet 3 years in a row to make it to the finals. We win this year after losing to Clinch and Wilcox back to back. Apparently it wasn’t an issue when these teams were running up the score on inferior opponents over the last several years. Finally, a coach comes along that out schemes them and they cry the blues. I hope we can schedule these crybabies in some non-region games this year. Go Raiders
Doc
January 10th, 2012
3:36 pm
If “everyone knows that private schools have a distinct advantage when it comes to fielding sports teams” then why aren’t the private schools winning the state championships in the “revenue” sports? They might win them in class A, but not in any higher classifications.
Chicago Dawg
January 10th, 2012
3:36 pm
when you stand up for fairness..your called renegade??? What a sad choice of words AJC
CrαZy
January 10th, 2012
3:39 pm
I wonder if the leaders of the A public schools like to dress up like women in their spare time?? I’d be embarrassed if I was a fan of one of these A public schools. Running from competition way to teach our future welfare recipients how to win in life!!!
GHSA Stripes
January 10th, 2012
3:42 pm
coughsalot,
you can’t have a state championship without 16 teams
coughsalot
January 10th, 2012
3:43 pm
To all of the people who talk about doing this in other classificaions: there are only about 12 private schools in all of the other classifications combined. I might be off by one or two. There are 7 in AA: Benedictine (Savannah all boys), GAC, Lovett, Riverside Military, St. Vincent’s (Savannah all girls), Wesleyan, Westminster. AAA: St. Pius, Woodward, Blessed Trinity. AAAA: Marist. You couldn’t even put all 12 of these together and have a state playoff.
G Rat
January 10th, 2012
3:44 pm
@Looking behind the losses, I want you to show me where Charlton County has complained any. Do that simple tast. I bet you cannot give one example of where Charlton has complained.
coughsalot
January 10th, 2012
3:46 pm
GHSA Stripes: I was joking about 4 teams competing in a Class A Public School Soccer or Volleyball tournament. I was implying that there are probably about 4 class A public schools that actually field teams in these sports.
GHSA Stripes
January 10th, 2012
3:47 pm
CrαZy, not all Public A schools were involved in the GPSA. Commerce and Towns are two that I know were not involved in any of the meetings. Commerce competes in a region that is nearly full of private schools.
GHSA Stripes
January 10th, 2012
3:48 pm
coughsalot, you aren’t far off with soccer, only 10 currently
Rock
January 10th, 2012
3:53 pm
This just opened the door wide open for Wilkinson County. They are just as guility as any private school of recruiting. The head coach is the school system’s superintendent. Give me a break..He goes out and gets who he wants and who will question him. AH! Nobody. PUNK!
GHSA Stripes
January 10th, 2012
3:54 pm
Riverside Military would have a hard time competing in any case. They have no summer training sessions for passing leagues and the like. They do have cadets come from all over, but they aren’t coming to Riverside for the sports.
Rockmart Needs a Coach
January 10th, 2012
3:55 pm
This the right thing to do in single A.
Calhoun and Buford are day and night. Look at the size of the players, you think Calhoun recruits those little guys ? Calhoun is the result of a city feeder program, good coaching, good parents and support with some county players. The player pool is small compared to Gwinnette Co, plus there are 3 high schools in Gordon Co. Dublin is a city school too no one is saying anything about them. Buford is bigger and stronger than everyone they play, not true for Calhoun.
South GA Panther
January 10th, 2012
4:14 pm
I believe schools were complaining before a private school won the football championship. It’s tough for a school with very few resources to compete with a schools like Wesleyan or Landmark Christian. On top of the resources they have, they can also recruit top players from very large geographic areas to their program. This complaint has been going on for years. This is not a recent problem. How many D1 baseball players have these two schools produced in the past few years? You can bet that these two schools alone have produced more D1 players than all of the rural single A public schools put together. I am not slamming these programs because of their success, but if these schools really want to have competition, then they should be playing up a couple of classes. These schools are on a completely different level than the public single A schools that they are beating year after year. Its funny, most of the people slamming the public schools for getting their way have never been to see just how bad it is in sports like baseball, golf, tennis, or volleyball.
Walker, Texas Ranger
January 10th, 2012
4:15 pm
This should include Buford, Gainesville, Calhoun and any other city school that allows students not in their school district to go to that school. It is no coincidence that Buford & Calhoun have played for the past 4 years in the championship.
Mike
January 10th, 2012
4:19 pm
Heck yes Dexter woods voted “no”, he knows who will be next. And rightly so.
Mike
January 10th, 2012
4:23 pm
Doc, because 85-90% of all private schools are class A. That is why they don’t dominate other classes.
CrαZy
January 10th, 2012
4:25 pm
Walker, Texas Ranger
Do a little research!! There is a TON of schools that have the same exact policies that Buford Gainesville and Calhoun have even county schools. The biggest difference between them and other schools is they simply have more to offer academicly and athleticly than other schools so parents want their kids there.
Bobo is Not the Problem
January 10th, 2012
4:32 pm
Panther Pride, I have no idea what your comment means: ” If you think there’s no difference between a county school in South Georgia with 10,000 citizens in the county and a school in metro Atlanta with 10 times that number in proximity of the school, you’re in a state of denial.”
Each school has approximately the same number of students, and ergo, the same approximate student body to draw from. McDonough, Fairburn, Savannah, and Athens (location of the four Class A finalists) are hardly megaplexes, and even so, the student populations of their private schools are the same as the public schools.
Long Tine Observer
January 10th, 2012
4:32 pm
It would be better if the Buford’s and Wesleyan’s (i.e., anyone who allows students outside their geographic area to attend and play)were required to play in the top classification, or at least play up several levels, as Marist has the integrity to do.
Egbert
January 10th, 2012
4:34 pm
I have spent 40 years listening to the crap about public school athletic supremacy over privates. The AJC has for years refused to even publish GISA scores. This kind of disparate treatment led to the recent migration of many Atlanta-area private schools to the GHSA (George Walton, Fellowship Christian, Mt. Pisgah, Pinecrest etc. ) Now the wittle public schools are afwaid to pway the big bad pwivate schools. Waaaah. What a bunch of wusses. These public school athletic directors should be ashamed of themselves and should ask their kids whether THEY want to back away from the challenge of playing everybody. This would be hilarious except that it will kill the GISA, and I hate to see that.
Mike
January 10th, 2012
4:34 pm
CraZy sounds a little worried to me. Good, we are coming after you boys next…
CrαZy
January 10th, 2012
4:38 pm
Long Tine Observer
Most of GA would be in the highest classification b/c most schools have the same poilicies as Buford, Calhoun, Wesleyan… ect.. people just hate on them because they win. People come to those schools more often for a reason… and less often to other schools for the exact opposite reason.
CrαZy
January 10th, 2012
4:42 pm
Mike…
worried?? No not at all I could care less what class we play in. I don’t think we’d have a problem even in AAAAAA. What I have an issue with is the pussification of people in America the “we can’t win so were gonna kick out the winners mentality”.
Tana
January 10th, 2012
4:45 pm
What about sports like wrestling where with the inclusion of private schools, there are only roughly 30-40 teams with wrestling programs and the private schools tend to be the better of the bunch. What happens there?
dcb
January 10th, 2012
4:48 pm
It’s the times we live in folks – appealing to the masses to change the rules to make it easier to be a winner. There is an analogy here – increase the taxes on the successful to help the less successful. Ease the mortgage qualifying rules to allow even those not able to afford a $200k house to have one. Re-norm the SAT’s to make every kids score look better. And other examples that go on and on and on. Hey, give these Class A schools in south Georgia some credit. They learned how to game the system with power politics and utilization of the news media to put pressure on the GHSA executive committee. Now they have the better competition out of the way in the playoffs and trophies are again within their grasp. Its the way of today’s society.
SOOHSO
January 10th, 2012
4:57 pm
LLet’s just all coelese!!!!
coughsalot
January 10th, 2012
5:01 pm
Long Time Observer: I’m tired of hearing about how Marist has such “integrity” for “playing up” in AAAA. Here’s the truth about that. Marist enjoys dominating the competition in all of the so called “private school” sports so they can win the Director’s Cup each year. They win the Director’s Cup every year on the strength of their finishes is sports like soccer, tennis, cross country, volleyball, golf. Sports that private schools tranditionally do well in. Since their are no other private schools in AAAA, Marist has virtually no competition in these sports. Marist intentionally plays in AAAA to avoid all of the other private schools. Then when they don’t fare well in sports like football or basketball…high profile sports, they can use the convenient excuse that they’re “playing up”. To me it’s cowardly.
Rockmart Needs a Coach
January 10th, 2012
5:08 pm
Travel is going to be the private’s problems.