Private schools in Alabama should have own classification

Published 11:56 am Monday, June 27, 2022

* This article was written in 2021, but put online in June of 2022 *

The East Limestone volleyball team should have a banner hanging in their gymnasium for a state championship.

Instead, they have to settle for runners-up after having to face Bayside Academy in the state championship game, a private school which has now won 20 championships in a row spanning four classifications during that run. The school, a premier institution near Mobile, can legitimately be considered the greatest volleyball program in American high school sports, due to their ability to recruit top-tier athletes and the constant influx of private money they receive.

How is it fair for East Limestone, a county school, having to face a private school with all of the odds stacked in their favor? Would it not make more sense to put the private schools in a classification of their own?

That was the whole purpose of creating the 7A classification. It allowed bigger schools that were consistently beating up smaller schools to play in their own group, giving 6A a more even playing field, which trickles down to 5A and so on.

While it is true there are much fewer private schools in the state than public schools, there would be a way to make the classification separation work without spreading the private competition too thin.

There are 56 private schools in Alabama offering football in 2021-2022. Why not create two or three classifications for them to compete against themselves? Why not have smaller schools of the 1A to 4A classifications grouped play each other and then 5A to 7A grouped to play each other, not only across football, but all sports competitions?

Take cross country, for example. Currently, the 1A and 2A runners face off in the same group, with the same awards and same All-State teams. The competition is still level, despite the group featuring two different classifications.

While this proposal would not stop the dominance of Bayside’s volleyball team, it would give public schools a chance to win titles, rather than hitting the same wall every year, known as private schools.

This is not the private schools’ fault the system is set up how it is. However, it can be improved.

This is in no way an attempt to antagonize successful athletics programs such as Bayside, Madison Academy or Mars Hill, among others. All of these schools offer prime opportunities and parents reserve the right to send their kids to these institutions. Athens Bible and Lindsay Lane are two local private schools that have outstanding reputations.

This is a plea to consider having these schools play each other by their own rules in their own classification, since the rules are in their favor anyways.