All the private schools in my area play in SCISA at some classification. I don't really understand it but it's probably enrollment based. A lot of them are pretty good in cross country for their size.
My opinion of Bishop England playing the small public schools is when BE beat Kingstree in girls' basketball to win Lower State. Kingstree's coach had just passed away in an accident and the fairness question really bothered me here.
Quote: One thing I would like to see happen in SCHSL is for South Carolina to crown an overall state champion. I suggest the winner of each 1A, 2A, 3A and 4A have a 4 team tournament.
That would be interesting, but who would play who?
Basically by attending a private school; you are opting out of the public school system and the SCHSL. Same as home school. They should have their on league but that means lots of travel(Money not a problem?) They should go out for teams in the public school system they are zoned for if they want to play in SCHSL. This has been brought up for home school students and needless to say the parents of the public schools are not happy.
In Chucktown, the home-schooled kids have their own team that plays predominantly SCISA and church-affiliated low-enrollment schools. The whole concept of enrollment-based classification in the SCHSL is to put schools with roughly similar player-personnel (and other) resources against each other. Nobody can tell me that parochial schools have similar "resources" to like-enrollment public schools. And that kind of defeats the purpose of "competitive" interscholastic athletics. Again, NOT a knock on BE.
In lower Classifications, it might not be a bad idea to just identify the top 12-16 teams, seed them, bracket them, and play. If 12, maybe give the top 4 byes. If 16, just play, 1v16, 2v15, etc.
I think I recall that a year or two ago a bunch of the smaller Georgia public schools threatened to break off from their equivalent of the HSL since they were getting walloped by private schools in the playoffs, at least in some sports. Does anyone know how that resolved itself?
And does anyone know if the smaller SC public schools have openly objected to the status quo system and demanded change - or is it just people on this message board?!
Why not just have the 1A bracket as "open seeding"? Let the top four seeds (regardless of Upper State/Lower State) have byes and let the rest play out until the Quarterfinals. That way if it comes down to Christ Church vs St. Joseph's then so be it. At least the Final would be worth watching. Right now it's just lambs to the slaughter!
Or how about just combine AA-A again and have it as Upper vs Lower State? I know there were 25 or so schools fielding teams this year but, really, how many have made a commitment for improving their product? Seems more like offering just another recreational outlet which is fine until it comes down to the State Championships.
How about the system work like the EPL? The top four teams in both the upper and lower state in 1A move up to 2A and the bottom 4 teams in the upper and lower state in 2A move down to 1A after the championship games.
Quote: Why not just have the 1A bracket as "open seeding"? Let the top four seeds (regardless of Upper State/Lower State) have byes and let the rest play out until the Quarterfinals. That way if it comes down to Christ Church vs St. Joseph's then so be it. At least the Final would be worth watching. Right now it's just lambs to the slaughter!
Or how about just combine AA-A again and have it as Upper vs Lower State? I know there were 25 or so schools fielding teams this year but, really, how many have made a commitment for improving their product? Seems more like offering just another recreational outlet which is fine until it comes down to the State Championships.
You seem to be missing the point.
Imagine you are a parent who lives in Blackville a town with 3000 people and you send your child to the local school with all of 248 students. When it comes to sports you would want your child to compete with similar sized school out of fairness, right?
The reason these schools have poor programs is because there are only 120 people at the school to pick from. With that number of students what exactly do you expect them to do?? What kind of commitment do you expect them to make?? They are probably lucky to get enough students to field a team!
And is it fair to kids in this school to have to play a state championship against an elite private school?? Wouldn't it better for the kids if they only had to compete with schools of similar size for a state championship?
How would you feel if it was your child playing for a team with 12-15 players with no JV team in an anyone who shows up make the team situation and you show up for the state championship and find you have to play a team made up college bound elite level players??? Sound fair to you?
