Daleville and other Wiregrass schools on the move in AHSAA reclassification

The Alabama High School Athletic Association’s (AHSAA) Control Board announced Thursday the newest class/region realignment, affecting a number of Wiregrass schools, including Daleville.

The AHSAA Central Board met Thursday morning in Montgomery to decide the reclassifications, which will begin in the 2018-19 academic year and go through the 2019-20 academic year.

The Daleville Warhawks will drop down from Class 3A to Class 2A for the first time since 1971.

“We kind of expected it with our numbers and looking at our enrollment,” Daleville football coach Rob Armstrong said. “I feel like going from a larger class to a smaller class, people would think that that’s an advantage, but last time I checked, this region in 2A had some folks that won a lot of football games and a few of these teams went deep into the playoffs this season.”

The Warhawk football team will join Class 2A, Region 2 alongside Abbeville, Ariton, Barbour County, Cottonwood, Geneva County, G.W. Long and Houston County.

Both Ariton and Abbeville made it into the second round of the Class 2A Playoffs this season, which means Class 2A will now include three teams that made it to the second round of the playoffs with the inclusion of Daleville. Geneva County also made the playoffs in 2017.

“There are some good teams, good coaches and good players in this region,” Armstrong said. “We have to continue to work hard this offseason, so that we make sure we can continue to have success.”

Daleville has been a member of Class 3A since 2008 after moving down from 4A, which Daleville was a member of starting in 1988. Daleville was a member of Class 2A from 1971 until 1977 previously.

Daleville played a number of freshmen during the 2017 season and the majority of starters were forced to play both offense and defense due to the Warhawks low number of players. Armstrong said many of the other schools in Class 2A also play freshmen and players on both sides of the ball, which may even the odds a bit.

“There are more teams in our region that had to play kids both ways like we did,” he said. “Comparing that to playing schools like Carroll and some of the teams in our old region will be different. A lot of those schools didn’t have kids that were forced to play as many snaps as our kids.

“Maybe that will even the playing field a little bit.”

Armstrong said that Warhawk players were pretty excited when they heard the news because they know and are friends with players from a number of the schools in the region.

“They’re familiar with some of the kids at those schools like Ariton, Long and Geneva County,” he said. “So, that will be fun for them to get to play some of their friends. As far as travel we won’t really have too many long trips, so that won’t hurt too bad either.”

One of the bigger disappointments for Daleville is losing yearly battles with region foe Geneva and non-region rival Elba.

“When we first thought that we may go down we wanted to try and keep a few games from our old schedule,” Armstrong emphasized. “We’ll still get to play Wicksburg but we won't get to play Geneva or Elba.

“I don’t know that there have been many seasons at all that Daleville and Geneva didn’t play, which is disappointing. Hopefully we can pick that game back up in two years.”

Armstrong said that he is trying to insure that the yearly matchup with Opp will remain but will be looking for new non-region opponents otherwise.

Daleville’s volleyball, basketball and baseball teams will move to Class 2A, Area 3 with Cottonwood, Geneva County and Houston County. The Lady Hawk softball team will play in Area 2 with Geneva County, New Brockton and Samson.

The New Brockton Gamecocks will stay in Class 2A, Region 3 but longtime Gamecock rival Elba has dropped from Class 2A to Class 1A. The Tigers have never dropped lower than Class 2A in the school’s history, after previously being members of Class 4A, Class 3A and most recently Class 2A.

Elba drops from Class 2A after winning two Class 2A State Championships in football and one in basketball in the previous seven seasons.

“There’s nothing we can do about that, we can’t control how many kids are in the schools,” New Brockton coach Justin Jones said. “Half of the time, since I’ve been here, (the Elba game) has decided the region, so that game has always been really good. We’ll see what we can do and try to work something out to keep that going but we can’t make any promises as to that.”

Elba will join Brantley, Florala, Georgiana, Kinston, McKenzie, Pleasant Home and Red Level in Class 1A, Region 2.

Highland Home, formerly in Class 1A, will replace Elba in Class 2A, Region 3. Samson will also move from Class 2A, Region 2 into Region 3 as the AHSAA expanded Class 2A’s regions from seven teams to eight. All of the other teams in the region will remain the same.

Highland Home was previously a member of Region 3 before moving down to Class 1A two years ago.

“We have some history with (Highland Home) and Samson, too,” Jones said. “We played Highland Home in the region my first couple of years here. It will continue to be a very competitive region and I’m looking forward to it. It’s exciting.”

New Brockton’s volleyball and basketball teams will remain in Class 2A, Area 4, while baseball remains in Area 5 and softball remains in Area 2.

Enterprise will remain in Class 7A, Region 2 in football, which will remain the same with Enterprise, Auburn, Central-Phenix City, Jeff Davis, R.E. Lee, Prattville and Smiths Station making up the seven schools.

Enterprise’s baseball, softball, basketball and soccer programs will also remain in Class 7A, Area 3, while the EHS tennis, golf, outdoor track and cross country teams remain in Class 7A, Section 2.

Classifications are typically decided by school enrollment but this year a new manner was used to classify private schools. In previous years private schools’ population was added up with each student representing 1.35 students, rather than the 1.0 public schools enrollment is calculated with. That calculation remains for this reclassification but this time “competitive balance” was also factored in.

The “competitive balance” is designed to offset private schools’ ability to enroll students from a much larger geographic range compared to public schools.

Private schools were assigned points based off of playoff quarterfinal appearances (one point), semifinal appearances (two points) and finals/championship appearances (four points) for each sport.

Football, volleyball, golf, baseball, softball and wrestling were bumped up a classification if the school reached six or more points. Basketball, soccer, swimming, tennis, cross country, indoor track, outdoor track and bowling were bumped up a classification if it reached 11 points or more.

For example, Dothan’s Providence-Christian volleyball and golf teams jumped from Class 3A to Class 4A, while its other programs remained in Class 3A.