OHIO HIGH SCHOOL ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION
The proposal to address competitive balance in OHSAA tournaments failed 339 to 301 (53 percent to 47 percent). A similar proposal failed 332 to 303 (52 percent to 48 percent) in May 2011.
How Ohio high schools are assigned to tournament divisions in the team sports of football, soccer, volleyball, basketball, baseball and softball will remain unchanged.
A statewide vote of high school principals was revealed on Tuesday and a Competitive Balance Referendum, Bylaw 2-1-4, was defeated by a 332-303 margin.
Currently schools are placed into OHSAA tournament divisions based strictly on male or female enrollment. The proposal would have applied three factors (boundary, tradition, socioeconomic) to the “athletic count” to calculate an adjusted number used to determine division.
Advocates felt the formula would help to level the playing field for public and non-public high schools.
“We voted for the proposal,” Nordonia athletic director Rob Eckenrode said. “I believed it was a start and you have to start somewhere. Some others felt it did not go far enough.”
Nordonia is a small Division I football school set to join the Suburban League for 2011-12.
“It did absolutely nothing for us,” Eckenrode said.
The belief was that some non-public high schools would be forced to play up one division thereby providing a fairer competitive environment.
“I don’t think it would have affected us all that much,” Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy athletic director Jay Tyree said. “It wouldn’t have bumped us up any farther than we would have gone anyway.”
For 2011-12, CVCA, a private high school in Cuyahoga Falls, is moving from Division IV football to Division III. Tyree said the Royals will play Division II boys soccer this coming season.
“I figured it would go down,” Rootstown athletic director Keith Waesch said. “There were a lot of question marks.
“It seems like there should be an easier way to decipher between public vs. private.”
Waesch, formerly a baseball coach, serves as coordinator of the 16 Portage Trail Conference athletic directors.
“I think it was a complicated issue that a lot of people didn’t understand when it comes to separating public vs. private,” he said. “We just weren’t convinced that this was going to fix the problem.”
Eckenrode actually believes an equally pressing Competitive Balance issue is the “disparity in the size of Division I schools.
“We’re concerned about it at Nordonia and I know (OHSAA Commissioner) Dr. (Daniel) Ross is concerned about it.”
Eckenrode explained that his high school is at a disadvantage competing against big Division I schools. The Knights are just under 540 boys and the Division I cutoff is at about 520, he said.
“No matter what you do, you’re not going to make everybody happy,” Eckenrode said. “I would hate to see us split public and private (into separate tournaments).”
Twice -- in 1978 and again in 1993 -- the OHSAA membership voted by a large majority in defeating a plan to separate the tournaments.
Tyree said he was more concerned about conceding too much power to the OHSAA Board of Directors.
“I didn’t like the way things were worded,” Tyree said. “It gave the Board of Directors the power to make changes whenever they wanted to.
“I don’t know if there’s a fix for everything to make everything fair.”
At the end of the day, Waesch felt the OHSAA did a good job of explaining the proposal at spring meetings; however, for many it was just too complicated.
“One thing that will come out of it,” Waesch said. “The OHSAA can say, ‘We tried.’”