Add the 4a girls to your statement as well. Although this would be due to school size.
This years upper and lower included the largest, second largest and 9th largest schools and Mann who is a magnet school (can't get an reliable answer as to whether any of their players are magnet students)
Going all the way back to 1994 (and of course school sizes may have changed) the 10 (currently) biggest schools have taken 31 of the 40 possible championship spots.
And to make it worse TL Hanna and Richland Northeast are the ONLY non top 10 schools to win the state championship in 20 years.
So right now the 4a championship is the big school championship. 2a/1a is the private school championship and 3a is the only place where public schools compete on fairly even ground with one another. (although the big 3a school dominate that region too)
I think the solution is to create a 5a class and throw the 10-15 largest schools along with the private, magnet and charter schools into that class and allow the traditional public schools to compete with each other on a level playing field. Plus 5 classes will even out the size difference in each class, currently the biggest 3a is nearly twice the size of the smallest.
Lots of upsides to this: rural school can compete fairly, more meaningful state championships, the best programs in the state will compete against each other for a championship.
The biggest downside would probably be scheduling and you can solve that by placing the 5a schools into 4a regions for regular season and then throwing them into a 5a playoff bracket at the end of the year.
All we need now if the people in charge to act like they are in charge and make some changes.
