Jan. 14—Jan. 23 looms as an important date for high school athletics in Alabama.
That’s the day the Alabama High School Athletic Association has set for unveiling new classifications and alignments that will affect the 2026-2028 school years. Normally reclassification happens in the middle of December, but this year it was postponed, and many believe the reason why is because significant changes are coming.
The most talked about potential change has been a split between public and private schools. A divide began back in late summer when the AHSAA ruled students who receive funds through the state’s CHOOSE ACT — which provides public funds through Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) that K-12 students can use at private schools — for transfer to a private school would be deemed ineligible due to receiving “financial aid.” This led to conflict with state leaders resulting in lawsuits and mediation.
Since then it is believed the AHSAA is considering a split between public and private schools, at least for postseason play. Currently, public and private schools share the same classifications and compete for the same championships, with private schools receiving a competitive balance multiplier. That multiplier takes effect when a private school reaches a certain championship threshold, winning a state championship, for example, bumps the school up a class.
A split between the two would be a significant change, especially for the three local private schools: Decatur Heritage, Lindsay Lane and Athens Bible.
“I’m always for a promotion of the game, but right now I’m just not seeing an impact on the players and the coaches that requires this big of a change,” said Decatur Heritage head coach Rich Dutton. “I think this is more of politics making its way into sports.”
If a split did happen, what would be the best way to do it? Keeping play between public and private schools with just a split in postseason, creating private school divisions for postseason play or a complete split from playing public schools altogether.
“I think a complete split could be really dangerous. It would open up a lot of things that would make it very difficult to compete,” Dutton said.
Public school coaches also aren’t convinced a split is the best way to move forward, with some advocating keeping the two together with tweaks to the competitive balance multiplier.
“There’s advantages to public school and advantages to private school. The best thing you can do is try to level the playing field for all schools,” said West Morgan head football coach Drew Phillips. “No matter what they decided, there’s going to be trial and error, positives and negatives. Whatever makes things the most fair for student athletes, that has to be the top priority.”
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Classifications
A split between public and private schools isn’t the only potential change coaches believe may be coming. Instead, there’s a belief that changes could be made to classifications.
Hartselle Athletic Director Jake Miles, who spent time as a baseball and basketball coach at Hartselle and Austin High School, said he believes this issue is the most important the AHSAA is facing.
“There’s a lot of issues the AHSAA is trying to solve right now, and one of the biggest is the overall numbers in each classification,” Miles said. “Right now the difference between the biggest 7A school and the smallest is greater than the difference between a 6A school and a 1A.”
Currently 7A has 32 schools while the rest of the classifications sit around 60. Austin head football coach Jeremy Perkins said he’s heard a lot of the rumors of potential changes, including having 32 in both 7A and 6A and balancing the rest. However, while he said talk of those changes is interesting, it could also create logistical issues.
“My first two years at Austin we shared a region with teams like Oxford, Gadsden City and Hewitt-Trussville. It was difficult on us and we also lost money because of it,” Perkins said. “If you go to 32 teams in 6A, there’s not going to be enough teams in Mobile to make a region which means someone from Montgomery will have to be in their region. That’s a long way to travel.”
Perkins dealt with travel issues this past season when his Black Bears had to travel to Semmes to take on Mary Montgomery in the first round of the playoffs. While it’s unlikely teams would have to travel five hours on a regular basis no matter what changes are made to classifications, Perkins said he wouldn’t wish the headaches his team dealt with on anybody.
“I don’t think some people realize how much it takes to travel. It takes a lot of planning and it gets expensive; and it’s all happening while you’re trying to get your team ready to play,” Perkins said. “It leads to a lot of sleepless nights.”
Any changes made to the classifications have to be made with all sports and student athletes in mind as well. Miles said while he knows football will always be the driving force for change in Alabama, it can’t be allowed to negatively affect other sports.
“You have to be careful because you don’t want to end up in a scenario where you have your basketball or baseball team having to make a long trip on a random Tuesday night for an area game,” Miles said. “That’s why I think it’s important to keep the model we have mostly intact. It can be tweaked or amended, but it doesn’t need to be blown up.”
Whether there ends up being significant change or no change at all, the shared sentiment among coaches is just knowing.
“There’s a lot of unknown right now and I think most coaches just want to know where we stand,” Perkins said. “Just tell me what region we’re in and we’ll get ready to compete.”
— caleb.suggs@decaturdaily.com or 256-340-2395. Twitter @CalebSuggs2
