Classification for 2023-24?

Every 2 years like clockwork, the MPA shuffles teams around in their latest classification plan and every 2 years there's outrage from somewhere, because you can't please everyone.

Well the first draft of the plan for next year (2023-24) has been sent out for review and almost immediately forwarded to me by half a dozen people and confirmed by half a dozen more.

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Let's dig in!

Look familiar? It should because despite the stated desire of nearly everyone to even out the regions a little (mainly spreading out the glut of teams in C) the powers that be have opted to...not.

Here's the current alignment:

I'll draw your attention to the fact that the cut-offs haven't changed. At all. Not by one student. The only changes stem from the natural ebbs and flows of enrollment sizes. The only changes here come from typing the new enrollment numbers into the computer.

I made a handy chart so you can see the changes.

As you can see, it's virtually the same. There are a couple of things that jump out:

Deering

Deering has been VERY competitive in AA and they now move down to A, which is going to make the existing members of A South(?) pretty unhappy. This also makes AA smaller, which is a terrible idea. It's bad enough we have 5 classes, but to have 2 regions with only 8 teams? No thank you.

Hermon

Hermon moves up to A. I'm actually working on a longer piece (that I now need to tweak) where I looked at whether or not Hermon (and other schools) should get promoted to A, so this is likely a good move.

Mount View

The Mount View boys went 13-5 last year in the always deep B North. Definitely makes sense to move them down to C.

Lincoln Academy

Lincoln Academy, however, moves up to A. The girls program has been competitive in B. They nearly won a tourney game last year. But the boys program has not. You could argue they would actually be a good candidate to move down to C. Maybe they could switch with Mount View?

Cheverus

Cheverus is now in B, but we can probably assume they'll petition up again.

What to do?

This isn't very hard.

Or something similar.

Which gives you this:

It should be noted this is only a draft and first drafts rarely make it to the finish line. Still, this fixes nothing and does a pretty good job of making things worse.

Or maybe we shouldn't be so reliant on enrollment numbers?

More on that later this week.