Class AAAA? Could be on the way for Richmond County.

Some folks are mad. They have every right to be.   

It has to do with the Richmond County Board of Education and athletics. There is a proposal generated in-house to move all of the county schools to Class AAAA for Georgia High School Association competition. The state’s teams are being reclassified and re-aligned for the 2008-2010 school years over the next 60 days. 

Every Richmond County school besides Laney will ask the GHSA to move to Class AAAA. That’s the proposal for realignment that was faxed to the GHSA yesterday. Laney will stay in Class AA. Everyone else moves to Class AAAA with Richmond Academy. The Musketeers are the only school in the county with Class AAAA numbers.  

Josey and Westside will hop two classes. Butler, Cross Creek, Glenn Hills and Hephzibah will play up one class. It likely means a region that includes Evans and Lakeside, with even a chance Harlem could move up to Class AAAA. Every GHSA school in our area except those in Class A will be affected by this move.  

“The big reasons for moving the schools to one class were transportation and financial issues,” Richmond County Board of Education athletic director George Bailey said. “Four years ago we allowed the schools to play in their own regions. Our gate receipts have plummeted those four years. We have not made a lot of money on those gates. The out-of-town schools in the regions just did not bring people to our games.”  

The current shortfall in football ticket revenue will be helped. There will be fewer off nights with crowds from Glynn Academy, Metter or Screven County opting not to take the long road trip. No county teams will make return trips to those respective schools. That’s a credible reason give the cost of gasoline these days. 

“One of the things at the top of the list behind this idea was travel,” Bailey said. “Our county schools and teams were just tired of those long bus rides and road trips.” 

It may allow control of a GHSA region. The Board of Education could tell its athletics directors and coaches how to vote on region matters. They can set schedules up in the county’s best interests. They can organize security officers in a more effective manner.  

There’s some good to the plan. But here’s the ace of spades when it comes to bad.  It’s a decision influenced by things that affect the adult world. Revenue and travel are things for adults to worry about. Count me among the group that believes that every prep athletic decision should be done with one thing foremost in mind: Kids.  

“You hate to say finances may be one of the driving forces,” Bailey said. “But state policies detail how schools can spend money. There are things we can only purchase through gate receipts like uniforms, equipment and paying the officials. Our officiating bill this year is going to be in the neighborhood of $180,000 for all the sports. The board of education can’t come in if we fall short of the gate monies that we need. We can’t come in and help out to buy uniforms for all these teams.”

The county high school teams rely on big crowds for proper funding.

“If those numbers don’t change, what you are going to have to start doing is cutting back the number of people you allow on a team,” Bailey said. “Instead of allowing a football coach to have 60, 70 or 80 kids we’ll have to have to cut it back to 40 or 50. Because that’s all the uniforms we can afford to buy for each team.”

Josey and Westside would be total underdogs from the outset.  

“You’ve essentially told those schools and those coaches to forget about winning a state championship,” one Richmond County coach told me last week. 

No area coach worth their whistle will be able to look a team in the eye on the first day of practice and identify a goal of winning a state title. It just won’t happen. Evans and its 1820 students would dominate a Class AAAA region of Richmond County teams. 

Here’s an example: Let’s say one of the best Josey or Westside in recent years made the state playoffs this year. They’d be facing a Class AAAA school like Evans faced last week. Lee County High School has 1774 students. The Trojans must have had 100 players suited up last Friday. They had at least 13 coaches in white polo shirts.  

If they had faced the Eagles, the other sideline would have lined up a total of 40 players. There would maybe have been six Josey coaches. Josey is slotted with 917 students. Westside is slotted with 902. Class AAA Glenn Hills moves up to Class AAAA with 983 students in its own right. That’s almost double the amount of student population. 

“It will be a David and Goliath thing,” Westside baseball and football coach Gerald Barnes said. “I’m not saying it can’t be done. We will try the best that we can. I don’t want the size of the schools to be a factor to our kids if that happens.” 

Football teams are driven by student population. That gives a Lee County twice as good a chance as having a good team at its school than Glenn Hills, Josey or Westside. It’s like a lottery ticket. One school just has more chances to have a lot of good players. 

One aftershock of the proposal is it will increase the disparity of Richmond County’s budgeted coaching slots for its teams. Class AAAA schools routinely field coaching staffs with anywhere to 12 to 15 coaches. Richmond County’s teams would be out-manned in that area, too. The county’s schools may have up to five paid assistants. 

The county’s Class AAA teams like Butler, Cross Creek and Hephzibah will be moving up to face a disadvantage in those areas, too. Those schools chances to win a playoff game in all sports will be reduced, not enhanced.

“I thought the whole purpose of classification was to have schools of the same size compete against one another in the postseason?” Hephzibah girls basketball coach Wendell Lofton said. “Why have classes at all then?” 

This is cash flow winning out over state rings. A bottom lines trumping success in postseason play. Playoff exposure helps scholarship chances. 

“Making the playoffs and a state championship ring is not the sole purpose we have in mind for athletic activities,” Bailey said. “Our first and foremost reason for athletics is to provide the most opportunities for all our students to be successful. We want to be able to offer all the athletic opportunities we can to all our students.” 

If the ability to simply field teams is compromised, the issue is more complex. If this is a mode of survival instead of profit, that’s a better reason for the move.  

The Savannah area has done this for years. The Chatham County schools played 1-2 classes up in regards to classification. Most of the schools have Class AAA or AAAA numbers, but they’ve been Class AAAAA since the GHSA went to five classes in 2000. No team from Chatham County has won a state football playoff game since. 

Laney was proposed to move up to Class AAAA last week. That school’s 629 students would have had a greater chore than Josey and Westside. I’m surprised those schools took a pass at staying where they belonged when Laney chose to stay Class AA. It’s an inequality. The only place for a youth to play football in the county if you want to win state playoff games and get noticed will now be with the Laney Wildcats. 

“Laney did not feel like it would be competitive,” Bailey said. “This wasn’t something where we were forcing the schools to move. If so, all the schools would have been in the Quad-A proposal.” 

Why not just play up to Class AAA? That would have left ARC alone in Class AAAA. The majority of the county schools would have stayed in AAA. Josey, Laney and Westside would have been the only ones to play up. Those schools would not have been as out-manned in AAA as they are under this new plan.  

The other fallout will be teams like Burke County, Thomson and Washington County may land in the same region with Baldwin and Jones County. That’s a tough region.  

This will not simply be a football issue. But football is where the numbers gap will be felt the most in athletic competition. Barnes will lead a baseball team that can win Class AAAA games in the area if it has pitching. But the ride to the state finals in 2005 won’t happen again. 

Richmond County’s top basketball team will suffer once it reaches state play. Hephzibah will face schools with up to 600 more students to draw players from. 

“It will prevent us from going deep,” Lofton said. “I want my kids exposed to the state playoffs in Albany and Macon. We will go to the second round and then we go home. Are we doing this in regard to what’s best for the children or something else? We are in the business of helping children I do believe.” 

If the new plan is approved, I’d suggest Richmond County use some of their savings to sponsor a splendid region championship trophy. Make sure it rivals the size of the Class AAAA state championship trophy. 

They’ll be the small school with the big trophy trounced in the first round of the playoffs every year. But they’ll have a big trophy. At least they won’t be slighted in that regard.