The NCHSAA Board of Directors held its 2024 winter meeting in Chapel Hill on December 4th and 5th, with the issues surrounding the 2025-26 realignment taking center stage.
The primary headline is: nothing new was decided about realignment or playoff structures, but intense discussions about these issues are ongoing.
Realignment and Conference Assignments
In 2023, the member schools adopted a bylaw amendment limiting a classification to a maximum of 64 schools. As a consequence, last winter, the Board voted to move to eight classifications in 2025-26, and last spring, adopted a plan whereby the 32 largest schools would be placed in the 8A class, with the remaining schools divided evenly among the remaining seven classes.
Earlier this fall, the NCHSAA released the 2024 ADM numbers, along with the classification of its member schools.
At the winter meeting, Director Que Tucker reported that the staff was working on conference assignments, and that they hoped to release the first draft of those assignments before Christmas. The Board would hear appeals from schools in January or February, before finalizing the conference structure.
Playoff Structure
The Bylaw Task Force gave a status report to the full Board regarding its work on the rules and regulations concerning the playoffs.
Subcommitees of the Bylaw Task Force have been meeting with the various stake-holders, to assess what each coaches' association would like for their sport in the new realignment environment.
Members of the NCHSTCA Board of Directors met with the Tennis Sub-commitee early last month to discuss the future of the individual tournament moving forward. Our board members presented a proposal, developed earlier this summer, which will preserve the 16-entry state tournaments, and eliminate the problems associated with assigning regional berths to conferences. Click here for the full text of our proposal.
During the discussion with the Tennis Sub-committee, the feeling was expressed that the individual tournaments needed to be smaller, because the number of schools had not doubled, even though the number of classifications had.
Following that discussion, the NCHSTCA Board met on November 23rd, and reaffirmed its desire to see the state individual tournaments remain as 16-entry brackets in singles and doubles in all classifications except 1A. We submitted a written response to the Bylaw Task Force, defending our original proposal.
At the NCHSAA Board meeting, the chairman of the Bylaw Task Force, Ericia Turner, relayed to the Board the essence of our response, as well as the feedback they have received from other coaches' associations.
As for the dual-team tournament, the sense is that whatever is decided for other team sports like basketball and volleyball will govern what happens to the dual-team tournament in tennis.
The discussion following the Bylaw Task Force presentation focused on two things: no final decisions have been made, and not everybody is going to get everything they want.
Further meetings are scheduled for January and February, and the Bylaw Task Force will finalize its recommendations in March for presentation to the Board of Directors in April.
While we have some concerns, we are grateful to the Bylaw Task Force for the opportunity to meet with them and make our case directly.
Charter Schools
The Board also wrestled with a proposal from Nash County about creating separate classifications for charter schools. There's some support for the idea of surveying the membership and conducting some research on how many state championships are won by charter schools. However, the proposal suggested doing something as part of the 2025-26 realignment, and the classification system has already been decided. ("The train has left the station.") Plus, the current bylaws, adopted by the member schools in 2023, state that classification is to be done exclusively by ADM, so a bylaw amendment would be required to implement the Nash County proposal.
The item was ultimately tabled, but the topic may well return to the Board once the 2025 realignment is completed.
RPI Formula
The NCHSAA Board of Directors also heard a proposal that would change the current RPI formula, making it more dependent on a team's own record and less dependent on that team's strength of schedule. The Board tabled the motion, citing the need to see what the playoff structure would be like before considering changes to the formula.
The use of RPI calculations is relatively new to tennis. Prior to the fall of 2023, tennis playoffs were based on a team's raw overall record, a process that engendered consistent complaints about teams being selected for the playoffs based on a gaudy records accumulated against weak opponents.
The proposed modifications all move the formula away from "strength of schedule" and toward "raw overall record".
We expect that this issue will be discussed again at the 2025 spring meeting in April.
Meeting Recording
The meeting was recorded, and that recording is available on the NCHSAA website, along with a press release summarizing all the business conducted at the two-day meeting.
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