Illinois to add more classifications beginning in 2007-08 school year

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. -- The Illinois High School Association on Wednesday approved handing out more state titles in several sports, including basketball, beginning in the 2007-08 school year.

The board voted to expand its current two-class system to four in boys and girls basketball, girls volleyball, boys baseball and girls softball.

Three classes will be created in several individual sports, including boys golf, boys and girls track and perhaps cross country.

Expanding the classes, which supporters say will let schools play other schools closer to their size, will take effect a season after the boys basketball tournament's 100th anniversary in 2007.

IHSA executive director Marty Hickman said the announcement made Wednesday an "incredibly historic day."

"Ten years from now, I think we'll look back and say this is one of the greatest things we've done for kids in our state and communities in our state," said Jim Woodward, IHSA board president and principal at Anna-Jonesboro High School.

Dividing the IHSA's 750 schools into more classes has been long debated in Illinois, which lumped all schools into one class regardless of size until its basketball tournaments were split into two classes in 1972.

Supporters contend that adding classes gives more players a shot at state titles, pointing to the IHSA's eight-division football playoffs, the only Illinois tournament series with more than two classes.

Expanding classes also lets schools play other schools closer to their size and eliminates sometimes large enrollment disparities, according to supporters.

Under the two-class system, schools with up to 735 students compete in Class A while larger schools play in Class AA. Expansion supporters say that creates enrollment disparities of hundreds of students in Class A and potentially thousands in Class AA because of large schools in the Chicago area.

Others, though, argue that adding classes waters down tournaments and makes titles less meaningful. Some cite the still mythical status of tiny Hebron, the smallest school to win Illinois' tournament before the two-class system was created. The school along the Wisconsin border had just 98 students when it won the state title in 1952.

Nearly two-thirds of IHSA schools supported expanding classes in a survey last month that drew responses from 57 percent of the organization's 752 members.