Quote: PJay, So how do schools like Bishop England, St. Joseph's Christ Church...etc. go about playing in the 3A or 4A class of SCHSL given their current enrollments?
Change the system??
A lot of people like the euro system where you win you move and if you lose you move down.
Might not work on a statewide level, but it could work for private schools.
Simple solution: 1. All private schools start at the same level they are playing now. Unless the team wants to play at a higher level.
2. Any private school that wins either the upper or lower state championship two years in a row gets moved to the next highest bracket. (or wins its region 2 years in a row if you want to make it easier to move them up)
3. Any private school teams that comes in last or second to last in its region 2 years in a row can be moved to a lower division, unless its enrollment exceeds that division.
Put something like this in place and in a few years the private school will be playing against other schools with similar skill talents. And the small public schools won't have to face the best teams in the state.
The overall goal here isn't to punish the private school kids, but to create a system that is fair to everyone from the smallest school to the largest. In such a system it looks like St Joseph would end up a 3a school which is probably where they belong. At that level they will face teams they can beat and teams that can beat them. And when they win a state championship it will have more meaning that beating a team like Blackville.
