Wes-Del celebrates its state championship victory against Christian Academy at Worthen Arena Saturday. Wes-Del defeated Christian Academy 3-0.
There was no talk of it in the week leading up to the big match. All that was on the mind of Wes-Del volleyball coach Biff Wilson was taking down Christian Academy in the state championship and hanging another banner in the gym.
But make no mistake, he was well aware of the consequences of the Class A state final.
Because of the Tournament Success Factor rule – which allows the IHSAA to reclassify teams based on how well they do in the postseason (teams were first moved up in advance of the 2013-14 school year) – the Warriors would move up to Class 2A with a win, but stay in Class A with a loss.
After the Warriors won in three sets and the celebration had died down, the realization of the program’s second state title in four years had settled in. There was chatter among Wilson and the parents: “Well, I guess we’re moving up to 2A now.”
Now, Wilson says, “That’s the price you pay for putting a ring on your finger.” But the question many are pondering in the volleyball hotbed of East Central Indiana is this: Is the rule fair, specifically to public schools?
“The underclassmen are getting punished for something they weren’t necessarily a part of,” Delta coach Heidi Zickgraf said. “I think it’s more for the private schools that can recruit and get those kids in there, but public schools can’t do that – or they’re not supposed to do that.”
As Zickgraf says, the freshmen and sophomores are the ones who deal with the reclassification once a strong junior or senior class has graduated. And therein lies the fundamental problem many teams are having with the rule.
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Yorktown’s Mimi Arrington sets the ball in a 2014 match against Central. Yorktown will be back in Class 3A this season.
Under the TSF, a team is subject to reclassification every two seasons if it has enough points. Winning a sectional is worth one point, a regional two, semi-state three and a state title four. If a team accrues six points or greater during the previous reclassification period, it will move up to the next available enrollment class for the next reclassification period. It then needs either four or five points to stay at that elevated classification, and six will take the team up yet another class.
The first time volleyball teams were moved up because of the rule, two of the three teams which bumped up were ECI schools: Yorktown and Wapahani.
Yorktown was coming off a state runner-up finish in 3A in 2012 and had to move up to 4A. This past season the Tigers went 30-7 and won a sectional, but they were plain overmatched at regionals in getting swept by eventual state runner-up Cathedral. Bloom remembers her players looking over at her wondering, “What do we do?” Except, as Bloom thought, there was nothing they could do – those Cathedral girls were just hitting over every block.
“I think we did our best in 4A, and I think it’s a little bit unfortunate for the kids,” Bloom said. “We had two years of back-to-back good classes, and the kids behind them are the ones that basically got punished.
“I think they’re excited to be back in 3A because they’re in our element. And that’s our class.”
When Jared Richardson took the reigns at Wapahani in 2013, the Raiders were coming off two state championships under Mike Lingenfelter. The biggest thing, he says, is looking at who is left after the state championships.
Playing in a sectional with the likes of Delta and Central, Wapahani didn’t even make a regional the last two seasons. In last year’s sectional final, Wapahani – listed in this year’s classification with an enrollment of 391 – lost to Central, which has 1,698. To be fair, that was an extenuating circumstance with Central getting a sizable bump in enrollment after the consolidation with Southside (that enrollment was not yet reflected in IHSAA classifications), but those situations could become more prevalent with this sort of system.
“When we got beat last year,” Richardson recalls, “everyone was like, ‘I just watched a 2A school get beat by a 4A school in a 3A sectional final.'”
Some coaches feel as though they are being punished for having one or two good classes, and the next class could be lesser-skilled facing better competition.
In Whitney Stewart’s sophomore and junior seasons at Delta, the Eagles finished state runner-up in 3A. Had the TSF rule been in place then, the Eagles would’ve bumped up to 4A the following season. Since it wasn’t, they stayed in 3A for Stewart’s senior season, and Delta wound up losing to Yorktown in sectionals.
So what would moving up to 4A have done if Delta couldn’t even win in 3A, Stewart wonders, as she prepares for her first head coaching job at Cowan.
“We work hard to make our program good, so we shouldn’t get penalized when we have two good seasons,” Stewart says. “Your classes come so erratically. You might have two or three good teams, but now you’re rebuilding and you’re doing it in 4A. It’s just not right.”
Wapahani celebrates a point in a 2014 match against Wes-Del. The two squads will be sectional rivals in Class 2A this season.
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When the IHSAA came up with the TSF, it was targeting schools that have dominated a particular class since Indiana went to the four-class system beginning in the fall of 1997. IHSAA assistant commissioner Phil Gardner, who was the principal at Wes-Del for 14 years and at Cowan for seven, says that there wasn’t one particular school or one particular sport that the committee zeroed in on.
One example would be Burris’ domination in volleyball since the class system was put in place – 14 straight state titles in Class 2A from 1997-2010.
“There’s no perfect solution to it, but you address the domination by some schools in classes and you try to make it more even,” Gardner says. “It isn’t going to be perfect, but we want to see how it plays out. We’ll know more in 10 years. It seems to be addressing the concerns we had and what we were trying to do.”
Some are under the impression that it was implemented just for private schools.
“It was a rule targeted at private schools in football, and it got blown up by one or two people to include every (sport),” Wilson says. “From what I was told, even football coaches agreed that it should be just a football rule. But someone thought it should be for all sports.”
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Because of the rule, the landscape will change every two seasons. Rivalries will change, like Yorktown not being in Delta’s sectional the last two seasons or Wes-Del not being with Daleville and Cowan the next two seasons. Providence has won state in 2A the last two seasons, but now it will move up to 3A.
The three schools that moved up in the initial reclassification – Yorktown, Wapahani and Bishop Chatard – are all moving back to their original class after not earning enough points to stay. Fort Wayne Concordia (4A), Brebeuf (4A), Providence (3A), Wes-Del (2A) and Barr-Reeve (2A) are the five schools moving up this season.
Where team will be every two years is hard to track. During a recent preseason practice at Wapahani, Richardson was raving about the Raiders’ sophomore class and how fun it will be to coach them as seniors.
“I’m looking forward to two years from now in 2A,” Richardson said.
Well actually, coach, that’s assuming you don’t get bumped up to 3A again.
“Oh yeah, that’s true,” he said upon being reminded of the rule. “Then we’ll see.”
That will be decided over the next two seasons.
Contact sports features writer Ryan O’Gara at (765) 213-5829. Follow him on Twitter @RyanOGaraTSP.