Here in Louisiana the classes are C, B, 1A, 2A, 3A, 4A, 5A, with 5A, of course being the largest. The highest class I personally have called is 2A. Last night I attended a 5A quarterfinal, the first 5A game I have seen in several years. LHSAA does not seed the tournament, so even though this was a quarterfinal, it was between the 1 and 2 ranked teams in the state. It lived up to its billing, nip and tuck all the way, and the winning shot made with a second or two left. The startling part to me was the way the game was called. I saw it as good and consistent, but more of a college, or even NBA style than what I am accustomed to. This game had more blocked shots with fewer fouls called than I ever recall seeing, with several shooters apparently knocked to the floor with no call. Lots of hand checking. No carrying. etc. The common thread was the way the game ended. The losing coach said on TV that the game winner was made on an obvious travel. I agreed, but it was the same play which had been allowed all night on both ends, the old three-beat jump stop. Do others see a huge difference from the small classes to the large, not only in the talent level but also in the officiating?

I lived in Louisiana for one basketball season and I worked a Salmen vs. Slidell boys game (2 whistle) that ended 93-87. I think I was still trying to catch up a few hours later :)

I think Chris Duhon (now at Duke) was on that Salmen team. He would've been a freshman or sophomore that season.

I think both of those schools are 5A. Slidell's fairly big, least it seemed so when I lived there.

To answer your question, I think it is obvious that teams at that level get a differently called game. Faster game, played more above the rim, and it takes a bit more contact to cause a disadvantage. The players and teams are more athletic and we adapt to the way they play the game.

Having worked some of the athletic schools in New Orleans for a season, it gave me an appreciation for big city basketball that you only get in a few places. Rut can probably address this question as well, coming from Chicago.

Rich

Only two classes.
 

We only have a two class system. So I would not say that the differences are the obvious. You can find Class AA schools that can bearly play above the rim and find Class A schools that can dunk all over the court. It just does not matter just by class. But maybe the conference has more differences. But this is my opinion.

Peace

Out of personal curiosity do you have any idea the number of students needed per school to make a 5A, 4A, and 3A designation? I graduated from a New Orleans high school back in the ‘60s. We were a 3A school which was the largest size class in the state at that time. We had only a little over 700 students in 3 grades.

After college I moved to Northern Virginia and was flabbergasted at the size of the schools around here. It is nothing to see 1600 to 2500 students in a 4 year high school. All are 3A schools which is VAs largest class. To answer your question; at some point it really makes no difference when you are talking about so many students to draw from. The difference between winning or loosing comes down to the bounce of the ball or who is hurt on any given day.

I moved to Illinois from Shreveport a few years back. I was in the LHSAA and worked myself up to some 5A regular season games. I will say that a vast majority of the officials working the larger school games there also worked the JUCO circut and D2 Heartland Conference.

Here's the LHSAA breakdown based on school enrollment:

5A=1103 and up
4A=687-1102
3A=420-686
2A=248-419
1A is broken down further
B=97-248
C=96 and below

1103? Eleven hundred. . .and three? I'm just curious how that particular figure was reached. Why in the world wouldn't you just make the cut-off 1,100? I realize that any cutoff is fairly arbitrary. Somebody could say, why not make it 1,097? It just seems that a round number is more convenient unless there's some specific reason to use a "non-round" number. Is there any known rationale for using 1,103 as the cut-off point? Just curious.

Chuck

In Idaho

A-5 1250+
A-4 800-1249
A-3 350-799
A-2 150-349
A-1 149 and below (Largest Number of Schools is in this div)

If I remember correctly, most of the in-town schools were 5A. When you get out of town, there were quite a few up and down the range. 2 and 3A mixed together to play basketball but not football. Schools 1A and below played each other. One school, Evangel, played 5A football but 4A basketball. You might have heard of Evangel football. They were considered one of the top H.S. programs in the nation a few years ago. Don't know about now.

As for the numbers, I can only guess that there was a school on the bubble (1101 students?) and the board took the requisite bribes of two ettouffes, 5 gallons of gumbo and a passle of Zwolle tamales to "adjust" the chart accordingly.

Chuck --

None of these categories is rounded, so I'm wondering if it has to do with the enrollments of certain schools. My chemistry teacher in college would always post a list after an exam of all the scores. They always fell into little clumps, and he used these "natural groupings" to establish the curve. He called it a "natural curve" or a "weighted curve". Out of a possible 100, scores would be like 98, 97, 97, 96, 95, 87, 87 ,86, 86, 86, 85, 82, 75, 74, 73, 73, 72, 72, 72, 72 ,71, 71, 71, 62, 61, 58, 51, 44 (and the occasional 23 or such). So on this exam, the top 5 would get A's, next 7 B's, next 11 C's, and everyone else F's. (Our college didn't give D's).

So maybe this enrollment scheme is like the natural curve thing.

Federal funding?
 

Just a thought in a different direction...could the unusual dividing lines somehow be tied to federal educational funding?

In most states it will depend on the number of member schools participating, then the will as equally as possible split the schools into their respective classes. It might even have to do with something about the average

Chuck,
In Michigan, they take the total participating schools and divide by four for classes A, B, C, D. They may tweak one or two schools if the number isn't divisible by 4.

Not much science there. The enrollments for each class vary each year.
mick

So could a school switch classes from year to year if they get a spike (or dip) in enrollment?

Chuck

In general, yes. It happens to tow or three schools in IL each year.

Montana's enrollment requirements
 

This is a copy of an email I got from the State Office:

Montana Enrollment requirements are as follows:

AA - 900 +
A - 370-899
B- 130-369
C- 1-129

The Board has been following these requirements closely in sending a school up a classification (They must be at these numbers for two consecutive years) but a school whose enrollment is dropping can petition to stay up - such as Butte Central with about 140 kids is still Class A.



The largest High School in the state is Flathead High Shcool in Kalispel with an enrollment of around 1400.

Blakchawk