Girls volleyball, girls and boys basketball, softball and baseball will all have seven divisions.
Football will remain at seven divisions, and the board will continue discussing changes for other sports, including track and field.
In a news release, OHSAA executive director Doug Ute said the change is “the right thing to do for student-athletes who have been competing at this disadvantage, citing primarily the disparity in school size in Division I.
“For too long, the largest schools in our divisions have been so much larger than the smaller schools in the same division, which has resulted in many schools accepting that they realistically have little chance at making a run in the tournament,” Ute said. “In some of our sports, there have been more than 200 schools competing for a state title in that division, which is significantly more than what most other states do, and what we do in many of our own sports.”
In the sports with new divisions coming this fall, Division I and Division II will only include 64 schools.
The OHSAA’s announcement also indicated the competitive balance criteria will not change unless voted upon by the annual referendum process.
“We know that there is a lot of work to do in the coming months to prepare for additional divisions this fall,” Ute said. “We have already started working on the details to accomplish this, but one thing we know for sure is that having two or three more state champions in these sports doesn’t water them down or diminish winning a state title. And we anticipate that this new format will be revenue neutral, since every school makes the tournament already.”
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