High school football and basketball realignments on KHSAA’s agenda this year
Initial steps for the next Kentucky high school football realignment and perhaps the first major basketball realignment in nearly two decades were among items discussed Wednesday by the Kentucky High School Athletic Association Board of Control.
For basketball, the coming varsity team additions of WEB Dubois Academy and Grace James Academy in Louisville and Cornerstone Christian Academy in Shelbyville sparked a discussion about district and region realignment in at least the 6th, 7th and 8th regions and possibly statewide.
Those new schools combined with the relocation over the years of a number of other Louisville schools, bears a review of the district and region structure in those areas, KHSAA Commissioner Julian Tackett said.
“I think what (the board) wants to do is get through football (realignment) and then start down the process of whether they want to tackle (basketball),” Tackett said. “They may decide they don’t or they may decide they only want to do these regions.”
The board of control took no action on basketball realignment Wednesday, but its discussion of the matter is sure to prompt debate around the state as board members consider their options at future meetings. Realignment for the 2025-26 season would need to be finalized at the board’s January 2025 meeting.
The last major basketball realignment took place in the 2005-06 school year and that structure also provided the framework for the alignment of baseball, softball, soccer and volleyball that has been used since.
“(The board) doesn’t have any choice but to look at (regions) 6, 7 and 8 just because of those schools. Then, beyond that, what’s the feedback?” Tackett said.
For football, the board directed KHSAA staff to draw up a proposal for a new alignment for the 2025 and 2026 seasons for it to review at its February meeting. Final action on football realignment would take place at its May meeting.
In past years, football has been realigned based on enrollments every four years, but due to the heavy impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on enrollment numbers in 2020 and 2021, the board decided to do just a two-year alignment term last time.
On Wednesday, the board again chose to do a two-year realignment as the state continues to deal with the after-effects of the pandemic.
Additionally, the KHSAA conducted a survey of other state athletic associations and found a majority revise their football alignments every two years, but the board opted against setting a firm realignment interval at this time.
In other action
The board took a number of other actions Wednesday, including:
▪ Football: Reduced the mercy-rule margin in football to 35 points, down from 36 points. A 35-point lead at any point in the game begins a running clock except for the end of quarters and timeouts. The previous margin of 36 points required winning teams to go for a 2-point conversion at some point in order to start the running clock.
▪ Soccer: Reduced the mercy-rule margin in soccer to eight goals, down from 10 goals. An eight-goal lead after halftime ends the game.
▪ Golf: Moved forward on a plan to implement “circle scoring” at state golf tournaments and make it optional for regular season competition. In “circle scoring,” tournaments could implement a per-hole scoring limit for struggling golfers to speed up the pace of play. The details of what the maximum score would be and how it would affect individual and team competitions will be discussed at a future meeting.
▪ Girls wrestling: Approved four super-regional sites for girls wrestling this season. Bryan Station will host this year’s super-regional for Regions 5 and 6 on Feb. 3. Statewide there are 578 female wrestlers competing in the first year of KHSAA sanctioning. That’s an increase for the sport of more than 200 registered participants over last year, the KHSAA said. The girls state wrestling championships will be held Feb. 17 at the Kentucky Horse Park’s Alltech Arena.
▪ Officiating: Approved the use of junior officials at games up to the junior varsity level. Junior officials (those 14-17 years old) had previously been approved for only middle school competitions, but the success of the program has warranted expanded use, KHSAA officials said. The KHSAA has 130 junior officials registered statewide across multiple sports.
▪ Statistics: Authorized KHSAA staff to begin implementing fines for teams failing to report statistics and scores from their games. Fines of up to $100 for failure to report statistics are already on the books, but the KHSAA had not enforced such fines to this point. Board members expressed concerns that some teams fail to report scores and stats as part of a strategy to make it harder for their teams to be scouted.
