New to the boards and have a few questions..

[Bubs 10]

I am from Kentucky and was able to get over to Virginia and watch a game this year. The game I got to watch was Gate City at Powell Valley, it was a great atmosphere one I had not experienced in a few years. High school football games used to be like that at my old high school (Cumberland, Ky) before the mines shut down.

 

Some questions I have are about the classification system that Virginia uses. Is class A divided into two different sections, and how does that affect the Districts? Another is about the new ranking system. Do you guys get points for your strength of schedule and wins or losses against out of state opponents? And does this determine who gets into the playoffs or what? How many teams can make the playoffs out of a district such as the LPD? Can all of them make it or just two or three or what?

 

 

In Kentucky our Classes are divided equally so that there are the same amount of schools in each one. The schools with the bottom quarter of enrollment make up 1A and then they work their way up until each class is filled. However there is a significant difference between our top 1A schools and our lower 1A schools. Teams such as Danville, Mayfield, Beechwood, Newport Central Catholic and the likes usually battle it out every year for the state championship, and more years than not they could play with most of our 2A, 3A and 4A schools. 2A is ususally a toss up between our mountain schools, since Corbin was placed in the western bracket a few years ago. Last year the 2A state championship came down to Corbin and Breathitt, which Breathitt won 55-12. 3A has some of our best heavyweights, Boyle Co., Paducah Tilghman, Fort Thomas Highlands, Covington Catholic, Bowling Green, Hopkinsville, Bell Co., Rockcastle Co., Mason Co., and such. This is usually our best and most competitive class. 4A is usually decided between the Louisville schools, Male, Saint X or Trinity. Most of these teams have enrollments of over 1600, and field teams with anywhere from 150-225 kids on the roster. No joke, most underclassmen don't even dress on Friday nights. If I'm not mistaken last year Trinity graduated 60 seniors, these three teams could beat some of the small college teams here in Kentucky.

 

Well I hope I haven't taken up to much of your time, look forward to talking football with you guys!! By the way, I am a huge fan of SWVA football. Most schools play a quality brand of football, (running the ball and great swarming defense) that most football purists love to watch.

[pdfootballguy 10]

I'll try to answer your questions. The teams are divided up into three classes. A, AA, AAA. Then the are divided up yet again into divisions. 1&2 for A, 3&4 for AA, 5&6 for AAA. The top 1/3 of the state is in AAA, the middle 1/3 is in AA, and the bottom 1/3 are in A. Once you are placed in those you are placed into 1 of 4 regions. Then you are divided into what division you are placed in by splitting schools into one division or the other depending on if they are in the upper half or bottom half of their region for enrollment. If there is an odd number of teams in a region the lower division has one extra position. Then the teams are divided into districts which are geographically based. It doesnt matter if you are in Division 3 or 4 if you are in AA, you are still in the same district fighting for the same district title. If this hasnt confused you enough there are 6 state champions every year. One for each division. Their are eight playoff spots per region, 4 for one division and 4 for another. Once you are in the playoffs you only play teams from your division. The way you get in the playoffs is by either winning your district of recieving a wild card big based on power points. If there are three district champs in one division in the same region there would only be one wild card position left. For example this year in Region 3 there were three district champs who were division 4. This only left one wild card spot. There was only one district champ who was division three in Region 3 so there were 3 wild card slots for Region 3 Division 3. Once you are in the playoffs you play single elimination. The winner of region 4 plays the winner of region 3 in state semis and then the winner of that plays the winner of region 1/2 in the state championship in AA. It's the same way in A, and AAA just with different regions and divisions. This probably confused the crap out of you but let me know if you need me to clarify something. This was a crash course on the playoffs but if you want to know more about power points go the swvafootball.com and go to his rankings page there should be a link on there or something. I hope this helped and didnt confuse you too bad. Maybe somebody could clarify this a little bit.

[Guest MagicMan]

This is the absolutely most screwed up system I've ever seen in my life. It makes the BCS look like child's play.

[gmenfootball 10]

If you liked the Gate city vs Powell Valley game and the big crowd atmosphere,you would love the Graham vs Beaver game,usualy there is around 10,000 fans..

[GMan 3,569]

<font color="800000"> VA's system is pretty screwed up right now.

 

First off, you have three Classifications, which are determined on a statewide level based on school enrollment. Total number of schools divided by three gives you the Classifications, Class AAA (biggest 1/3), Class AA (middle 1/3), and Class A (smallest 1/3). Then, you have several schools that choose to play up in Classification for one reason or another. Several schools in the Richmond area that have Class AA numbers will play up to Class AAA. Some schools in SWVA that have Class A numbers will play up to Class AA. Therefore, there isn't truly an equal number of schools per classification.

 

Within each Classification, there exists four Regions. The number of schools within each Region varies...another problem with the system. The total number of schools in each Region is divided into two Divisions. Class AAA has Divisions 6 and 5 (6 being the larger schools in each Region), Class AA has Divisions 4 and 3 (4 being the larger schools in each Region), and Class A has Divisions 2 and 1 (2 being the larger schools in each Region). This is where the REAL problems begin. Certain Regions have much larger schools than other Regions. In many cases, schools which would be Division 4 size in one Region might be Division 3 size in another Region. So when it comes time for the playoffs, you truly don't have a fair playing field for the Regions with the smaller schools.

 

Districts consist of schools from both Divisions within each Classification. Although, there are some Districts that have schools from two Classifications...Combination Districts...see, I told you this system was really screwed up.

 

This year, the VHSL adopted a new Rating System. You get so many points for wins and losses against schools based on which Division they are in. For out-of-state schools, the VHSL determines which Division that school would fall in, based on enrollment, if it were an VA school...so points are rewarded for out-of-state schools as well. If you would like to see how the system works, click the following link to my website:

 

http://www.swvafootball.com/va_and_wv_rating_scales.htm

 

Each Region will have four teams to make the playoffs in each Division. District Champions automatically qualify for the playoffs in whichever Division they belong. All other playoff spots are filled based on the VHSL Rating System. Therefore, every district will automatically have a minimum of one team in the playoffs. The only exception to this is in the Combination Districts...they do not receive an automatic spot in the playoffs for District Champions, they must qualify based on VHSL Rating points.

 

Since you seem to be more familiar with the LPD, I'll use Region D to help explain how the playoff system works, since this year is such a good example of how screwed up the system is.

 

Region D has three Districts...the Lonesome Pine, the Cumberland, and the Black Diamond. Each District Champion automatically qualifies for the playoffs. This year Gate City, a Division 2 team, won the LPD, Rye Cove, a Division 2 team, won the Cumberland, and Haysi, a Division 2 teams, won the Black Diamond. Those schools would be seeded based on their VHSL ratings...Gate City was #1, Haysi was #2, and Rye Cove was #3. Since four schools from each Division make the playoffs and since all three District Champions were Division 2 schools, only on "wildcard" spot was left to fill out the four playoff teams. Therefore, the team with the highest VHSL rating of all the non-District winning schools would earn that spot. Powell Valley had the highest rating and was the #4 seed in the Division 2 playoffs of Region D, Class A. Rye Cove finished 5-5 but won their district and qualified for the playoffs...Clintwood finished 8-2 and Honaker finished 9-1, neither made the playoffs...yet another problem with the system.

 

Now that all the District Champions from Region D were Division 2 schools, that left four "wildcard" spots open for the Division 1 playoffs. All qualifiers would be determined by the VHSL ratings. J.I. Burton had the highest rating of all the Division 1, Region D schools and were awarded the #1 seed. Twin Springs was the #2 seed, Castlewood the #3 seed, and Saint Paul the #4 seed.

 

All playoffs pair #4 at #1 and #3 at #2 with winners advancing to the Regional Championship and the higher seed being the home team.

 

The number of teams making the playoffs from each District can vary. As I said, each District (except Combo Districts) will have at least one school make the playoffs. The LPD could qualify as many as six schools in the post-season considering that eight teams make the playoffs and with three districts in Region D, two spots are automatically taken by the Champions of the other two Districts. But having six teams from the LPD make the playoffs in any given year is very unlikely the way the VHSL rating system works.

 

The VHSL is starting to look at other alternatives to the three-Class, six-Division system. There is talk of possibly going to a four-Class system without Divisions plus some other proposals are being tossed around.</font>

[Bubs 10]

Man, that is one screwed up playoff format! I thought it was tough trying to figure out our district here in Kentucky, usually in our district everyone beats everyone else and we have to use tiebreakers to figure out our 1-4 seedings. This year the same thing would have happened but in the last two weeks of the season some of the teams involved in the tiebreaker lost district games and we didn't have to use the system.

 

Our districts and playoff system is a whole sight different than that one you guys use. Most of our districts have four or more teams in them, some have 8 or 9 teams in the same district. And the state is broken down into four regions, regardless of class. But we don't have to play the larger schools in the region to make the playoffs. I will use our district and region for example. In Cumberlands district there is 7 Class A teams including CHS. During the course of the season we have to play all of our district teams, and then schedule 4 non district games. These non district games are used to break ties for the playoffs, and out of state opponents are not used in this format. For example, Williamsburg High played 3 out of state non district teams, two from Tennessee and one from Virginia. If we would have had to resort to the tiebreaker system then they would have been the odd man out, and would have been a four seed. Anyway like I said the state is broken down into four regions and there are two districts per class in each region. For example Cumberland is in region 4 district 7, in the playoffs we are paired with region 4 district 8, which includes Pikeville, Hazard, Phelps, Jenkins, Fleming Neon, South Floyd, Paintsville and Allen Central. These teams compete for four playoff spots and then are matched up with our top four district teams. I actually favor going back to our old set up where only two teams from each district make the playoffs, or maybe take three and give the one a bye week. I just think that four teams is to much and some districts only have four teams in them and that means they can go 0-10 and still make the playoffs.

 

Anyway we play three region games in the playoffs with the third being the Regional Championship. The winner plays in the state semi-finals or sectionals if you will where the four region winners are paired against each other. Region 1 always plays Region 2 and 3 always plays 4. The winners advance to the state championship games in Louisville at Papa Johns Stadium.

[great_state 12]

I've been following Kentucky and Tennessee teams this year that played Virginia teams (so as to maintain my own standings for Virginia) and your system seems very similar to that used in Tennessee, with a certain number from each district making the playoffs. How far does Cumberland have to travel for district games typically? I believe that is one of the main problems for a lot of high schools in Virginia.

[Bubs 10]

Typically, Cumberland doesn't have to travel far to play a district game. They do make one long trip to Somerset which is in Central Kentucky and really has no business geographically being in a mountain district. For the most part their district games are 30 minute to one and a half hour bus trips. The shortest being Evarts and Harlan, 30 minutes max. And the longest being 2 1/2 hours to Somerset. The other longer trips are to Lynn Camp and Williamsburg and they are about 1 1/2 hour trips. Somerset is really in a bad spot, they are better suited geographically to be in the same district as Danville and other central Kentucky teams but opted instead to move into this district to avoid having to play Danville in the playoffs. To Somersets credit, they do still play Danville in the regular season but now they don't have to face them unless they both make it to the state championship.

 

Other districts face the travel problem as well and they are actually worse than what Cumberland has. The mountain 3A district is spread out all over the place. It consists of Rockcastle Co, Bell Co, Knox Central, Madison Southern, Clay County and Perry Co. Central. The shortest trip would be Bell to Knox Central and vice versa, its only 30 mintues. The other trips are at least an hour and a half. The 2A district is another one like that, it consists of Middlesboro, Whitesburg, Cawood, Knott Central, Breathitt County and Leslie County, except for Whitesburg to Knott Central trust me there are no short trips in that district.

 

Some of these problems will be remedied in a few years when Whitesburg, Fleming Neon and Letcher consolidate into one school, and Cawood, Evarts and Cumberland do the same. It will probably put both schools into a 3A district and make longer and shorter bus trips for every 1, 2 and 3A school involved. Because Cumberland, Evarts and Fleming Neon are 1A schools and Whitesburg and Cawood are 2A schools both districts will be losing several teams and then the 3A district will be getting two teams in return. But by the time that rolls around, the KHSAA will have to realign the districts and may solve these problems before they become one.