KHSAA puts brakes on plan to create 11th Region basketball super regionals
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- KHSAA tabled 11th Region’s super regional plan over statewide policy concerns
- The proposal aimed to include all teams and share tournament revenues
A proposal to expand the boys and girls 11th Region basketball tournaments into “super” regionals was tabled by the Kentucky High School Athletic Association Board of Control on Friday after concerns were raised about its policy implications for the whole state.
The 11th Region’s concept, part of a sweeping overhaul of its boys and girls tournaments approved internally by its athletic directors in an 11-6 vote with one abstention, would expand the tournaments to include every team, including those who would otherwise be eliminated in the district semifinals or earlier.
“We want it to be equitable for all schools,” Henry Clay athletic director Kristian Junker told the Herald-Leader. Junker presented the region’s plans and rationale to the KHSAA ahead of this week’s board meetings. “If you are a school that doesn’t make the region tournament for basketball, the difference in your payout is sometimes $6,000 or $7,000. And if you’re a school that doesn’t make the tournament for 10 years, let’s say, that’s possibly $60,000 or $70,000 that you’re missing out on because we’re not all sharing together.”
Most of that money comes from ticket sales and typically goes back to each school’s corresponding athletic programs, although schools can distribute the funds how they wish, Junker said.
“And it’s just the idea that everybody gets to be a part of the region tournament and not just eight teams,” Junker said.
With some of the state’s top-ranked boys teams, including 2025 Boys’ Sweet 16 state champion Great Crossing, the 11th Region boys finals have drawn standing room only crowds at Paul Laurence Dunbar’s S.T. Roach Center over the last two years.
Super regional precedent is already set
The KHSAA dictates district and region tournament structures and deviations from those rules requires board approval.
This year, in both 15th Region boys and girls basketball and 6th Region baseball and softball, the KHSAA allowed pilot super regionals to be held at the behest of the schools involved due to competition concerns.
For the 15th Region, the super regionals aimed to solve a competitive balance issue caused by it having only 14 teams for each gender, making it the smallest region in the state. The 14th Region includes two districts that have just three teams each — the 59th and 60th. Most districts across the state have at least four teams.
Lawrence County became the first district semifinal loser to defy the odds and advance all the way through the new super regional bracket to a region title and this past season’s Boys’ Sweet 16.
Meanwhile, 6th Region softball has seen schools in its 22nd District have difficulty fielding teams. There have only been two teams vying for a 22nd District title over the last several years while the neighboring 21st and 23rd Districts have four teams each and the 24th carries five.
Due to equity concerns, the KHSAA allowed 6th Region baseball to have a super regional as well with the 6th completely eliminating its district tournaments and crowning district champions and naming top region seeds based on regular-season standings.
Tackett said the issue for the board to consider isn’t just about the 11th Region’s proposal. It’s about whether the board wants to entertain fundamentally changing postseason structures that have been in place for decades for regions without problems similar to the 6th and 15th.
“The question originally was, if we don’t have enough teams to have four or five-team districts, can we do something different? Now they (board members) are being asked by a region to consider — no matter how many teams we’ve got — can we do something different for our region?” KHSAA commissioner Julian Tackett told the Herald-Leader. “We’ve got team sports in soccer, volleyball, softball, baseball and basketball. Do we let all of them do that? … You could have 14 different formats in 15 regions.”
No special circumstances in the 11th Region
All of the 11th Region’s districts — the 41st, 42nd, 43rd and 44th — have at least four boys and four girls teams. The 11th’s plans would keep its district tournaments intact and offer play-in game byes to district runners-up and quarterfinals byes to each district champion at the regionals.
Henry Clay is part of a five-team 42nd District that also includes Bryan Station, Frederick Douglass, Scott County and Sayre. Over the years, the 42nd, like some other highly competitive districts across the state, has had some highly ranked teams knocked out of the postseason during district tournament semifinals. The Blue Devils’ boys team has been eliminated at that stage each of the last three seasons after claiming the region title in 2022.
A super regional format might also benefit teams from the 44th Region — Madison Central, Madison Southern, Berea and Model — who are the last remaining holdouts in the state to not seed their tournaments based on regular-season results. Its district tournament brackets are set by blind draw every year.
Henry Clay’s Junker didn’t address the competitive advantage aspect of tournament expansion and reiterated the primary reason for the proposal was to involve more than just eight teams in the region tournaments each year and to more equitably share revenues among schools.
Most of the 11th Region’s plan doesn’t need KHSAA approval, including sharing of revenues and plans to hire a tournament manager to garner sponsorships and secure bigger venues such as the University of Kentucky’s Memorial Coliseum or Eastern Kentucky University’s McBrayer Arena.
Paul Laurence Dunbar athletic director Damon Kelley sits on the KHSAA board as its president-elect and acknowledged he was not one of the ADs to vote for the proposal presented to the KHSAA. He noted one of his objections to the proposal was that it was done by a vote on the whole rather than its individual parts.
“I would like to see a vote taken on each individual proposal separately to see what the support is,” he said.
Tackett indicated the KHSAA would ask the 11th Region to resubmit its super regional proposal with only the structuring of the bracket put before the board of control.
“This doesn’t just change this on the spot, this situation is unique to itself. This could change things across the state,” KHSAA board president Greg Howard said. “We’ve got to be careful and get more data and look at that.”
