With just south of 1,200 students, Greenwood isn’t going to be confused with Medora anytime soon. But in the current world of Class 4A sports, the Woodmen are definitely fighting an uphill battle against the Center Groves of the world.
The IHSAA seems to be sympathetic to their plight.
A proposal has been put forward that would base classification on hard enrollment barriers starting in the 2024-25 school year, potentially replacing the current system that splits the four classes up evenly regardless of enrollment.
IHSAA commissioner Paul Neidig says that the goal is to eliminate extremes at both ends of the spectrum. One one end, that means eliminating the huge enrollment gaps between the biggest of the big 4A schools (Carmel has more than 5,000 students and 13 different schools have enrollment numbers north of 3,000) and those on the bottom end (Greenwood is one of 25 Class 4A schools with enrollments under 1,300 students, at last official count).
On the other end, Neidig has concerned about some smaller rural schools, such as North Decatur or Wes-Del, that had traditionally been in Class A but have been bumped up to 2A in recent years because of the proliferation of tiny religious or charter schools.
Under the new proposal — which will be voted on by the IHSAA’s board of directors on May 1 —every school under 1,400 students would move down to Class 3A. Schools with enrollments between 325 and 599 would be in Class 2A.
The changes would likely impact only two Johnson County schools. Greenwood would be the biggest beneficiary, moving down into Class 3A. Indian Creek, which had an enrollment of 591 according to the last IHSAA count but is almost certain to be above 600 next time around, would remain a 3A school but find itself on the very bottom of that class numbers-wise.
Obviously, the Braves are not fans of the proposed change.
“Now we basically become the Greenwood of 3A,” Indian Creek boys basketball coach Drew Glentzer said. “Percentage-wise, the discrepancy between 1,400 and 600 is almost what it was when you just split 4A.”
Neidig understands that some schools are going to feel as though they’re getting the shaft in this proposed new system, but he believes that it’s the best overall solution available at the moment. Previous discussions had centered around possibly splitting the state into five classes; Neidig felt that would tarnish the state finals experience in sports like volleyball and basketball, where playing five title games at a large venue in the same day would become a logistical nightmare.
Those championship contests, he says, weren’t the only concern. Long bus rides for tournament games are already an issue in the larger classes, thanks to geographic outliers such as East Central and the Terre Haute schools. Watering everything down with a five-class system, the IHSAA reasons, would only create more such headaches.
“We’re not a state with 700 schools like Ohio or Illinois,” Neidig said. “Once you start going to five classes, then you really introduce some travel issues, especially in the southern part of the state.”
The good news for the affected schools is that even if the proposal passes, everyone would have a full year to prepare for the fallout. Indian Creek girls basketball coach Brian Ferris, while not in favor of the possible changes, has already started to map out new contingency plans.
“We’ve been trying to beef up our schedule to try to be competitive with the top-end 3As the last few years,” he said. “Depending on how the sectional and regional alignments would be, are we going to have to meet a Bedford (North Lawrence) or a Mooresville that early? We would have to look to beef up our schedule even more, and kind of trickle that down even into our younger grades so they could get used to that bigger school, bigger competition earlier on.”
Should the proposal pass, Franklin would find itself on the smaller end of Class 4A rather than in the middle; of the schools above the 1,400 mark at the IHSAA’s last count, only nine of the 68 had fewer students than the Grizzly Cubs’ 1,571. But running with the big dogs hasn’t generally been an issue lately for Franklin, which has been a state runner-up in three different sports (girls basketball, boys and girls swimming) in the past five years and is generally competitive across the board at the sectional level.
For a school like Greenwood, which has won just three team sectional championships in four-class sports over the past 25 years (boys basketball in 2002 and 2020, girls basketball in 2012), the situation was becoming a bit more dire. This proposal represents a much-needed game-changer.
“It would be huge for us,” Greenwood athletic director Mike Campbell said. “Just from a statistical standpoint, you’re more likely to be able to have chances to compete for sectionals year in and year out. … If we get the long draw (right now), to beat three schools of 2,000, 2,500 kids, it becomes more difficult.”
Joe Bradburn, the boys basketball coach for the Woodmen, considers himself a traditionalist who favors the current system — but he agrees a change could benefit teams like his.
“From a general standpoint, if we are in 3A and it eliminates a lot of the Bloomingtons and Center Groves, it does make this job a different job,” he said.
How people feel about the proposal is, as Neidig noted, “very lens-dependent.” Each school is going to have a different opinion on the matter, and that opinion is likely going to be based upon whether or not the changes would benefit it.
In the end, though, the IHSAA has to consider what is best for more than 400 schools. Whether Indian Creek dislikes the potential outcome or Greenwood likes it is, in the grand scheme of things, irrelevant on voting day; whatever works best for Indiana high schools as a whole is what will probably come to pass three and a half weeks from now.
“Everybody can draw a perfect tournament that works for their school,” Neidig said.
