It’s a day high school coaches in Alabama look to with a mix of anticipation, excitement and fear. The information that comes out on that day could determine their chances of making the playoffs, how far the team will travel and how much work they need to put into scheduling.

It’s the day the Alabama High School Athletic Association announces the classification for the next two school years, and that day came Thursday with several Limestone County schools seeing changes to their schedules.

The ASHAA reclassifies every two years, placing schools in Class 1A through Class 7A based on the school enrollment numbers. The newest classification will cover the fall of 2018 through the spring of 2020. The AHSAA puts each school in a region or area for each sport. Football regions generally have six to eight teams, while other sports teams are put in areas of generally three, four or five teams.

The only Limestone County team to change classifications is Elkmont, which moved from Class 3A to Class 4A, but other schools were greatly affected by other schools moving up or down.

Perhaps no schools were as greatly affected as East Limestone and Ardmore, which remained in Class 5A, Region 8 in football but saw their entire region change around them. East and Ardmore are the only two schools to remain in that region from last season, as Mae Jemison and Lee-Huntsville moved up to 6A while Brooks and St. John Paul II moved down to 4A. Lawrence County and Russellville remained in 5A but moved over to Region 7.

East and Ardmore now find themselves in a region with Arab, Brewer, Guntersville, Madison Academy, Madison County and Scottsboro.

“We definitely can throw away a bunch of scouting reports, I can tell you that,” East Limestone football coach Jeff Pugh said. “It looks like we’ll be spending some gas money, too. But we didn’t have much choice because there are not many 5A schools in the northern part of the state.”

Another thing that affected East and Ardmore’s region is the fact the AHSAA used “competitive balance” to determine which class some private schools would be in. The competitive balance clause moves private schools who are consistently successful in an individual sport into a higher class.

This means St. John Paul II, which has won just one game in three seasons, moved down to 4A while Madison Academy, a three-time state champion, moved up to 5A.

“I’m surprised they classified the private schools due to past success,” Pugh said. “That changed some things for us and was something I wasn’t expecting. It’s going to be a tough region, but it will have some freshness to it, playing teams we haven’t played before in region play.”

Athens High was also affected by the reclassification. The Golden Eagles remained in 6A but moved from Region 8 to Region 7. Florence and Austin moved up to Class 7A, while Hazel Green moved to 6A, Region 8.

Athens’ region consists of only six teams, down from the eight-team region it played in this past season. That means coach Cody Gross had to schedule five non-region games, when there are only four statewide non-region game weeks fixed into the schedule. Fortunately, Region 8 also has six teams, which means teams in those regions could play each other in non-region games during a region week for other regions around the state.

“We were all very anxious to see what was going to come of (reclassification),” Gross said. “You throw every scenario in the world out there, and everybody you talk to has a different theory. It’s hard to work out those non-region games, especially in a six-team region. It’s like putting a puzzle together.”

As soon as the new regions were announced at approximately 10 a.m. Thursday, Gross and other coaches were on the phone trying to find non-region teams to play.

“It’s been a nonstop deal since 10 a.m.,” Gross said. “It’s amazing how many conversations can take place at one time.”

To see area listings of all other sports, see The News Courier’s website, www.enewscourier.com.