From the Jan 9th IHSA Board meeting:
ACTION ITEMS
1. The Board approved a recommendation to make changes to Board Policy 17 Classification System.
The first change is to the waiver process, which adds the language “1. Won a trophy” to the waiver process under the “Other Sports” heading.
The language was originally removed because it was believed that any team that won a trophy in the state meet would have qualified for the state final (the next condition listed). However, this is not true in track & field and now tennis, which are multi-class sports where qualification for the state meet is on an individual basis only.
The second change is to the Success Adjustment Policy.
The policy now reads (new language in BOLD):
A sport or activity program at a non-boundaried school shall be subject to the success adjustment if, over the course of the last four school terms, the program has won at least two trophies, one of which must have been within the last two school years. In such a case, one trophy won in the highest class will be disregarded, and the school will be moved up one class from the highest class of the remaining trophies. A school will never be adjusted up or down more than once class from one school year to the next.
Under the previous language, a non-boundaried school could, for example, win state titles in Class 2A and Class 3A in back-to-back years and not be subject to the Success Adjustment Policy, which was not the intention of the committee. Now, a school in that example would play in Class 3A the next season.
Executive Director Craig Anderson:
“These changes are both small tweaks, which is something we expected would occur over time as we evaluated the recent changes to these policies. Essentially, these were both instances that the committee had not considered when implementing, which contradict the intention of the waiver and success formula rules.”
ACTION ITEMS
1. The Board approved a recommendation to make changes to Board Policy 17 Classification System.
The first change is to the waiver process, which adds the language “1. Won a trophy” to the waiver process under the “Other Sports” heading.
The language was originally removed because it was believed that any team that won a trophy in the state meet would have qualified for the state final (the next condition listed). However, this is not true in track & field and now tennis, which are multi-class sports where qualification for the state meet is on an individual basis only.
The second change is to the Success Adjustment Policy.
The policy now reads (new language in BOLD):
A sport or activity program at a non-boundaried school shall be subject to the success adjustment if, over the course of the last four school terms, the program has won at least two trophies, one of which must have been within the last two school years. In such a case, one trophy won in the highest class will be disregarded, and the school will be moved up one class from the highest class of the remaining trophies. A school will never be adjusted up or down more than once class from one school year to the next.
Under the previous language, a non-boundaried school could, for example, win state titles in Class 2A and Class 3A in back-to-back years and not be subject to the Success Adjustment Policy, which was not the intention of the committee. Now, a school in that example would play in Class 3A the next season.
Executive Director Craig Anderson:
“These changes are both small tweaks, which is something we expected would occur over time as we evaluated the recent changes to these policies. Essentially, these were both instances that the committee had not considered when implementing, which contradict the intention of the waiver and success formula rules.”
