www.the-daily-record.com/news/article/4734956 Must be a big deal in some part of OHIO
December 23, 2009
By AARON DORKSEN
Daily Record Sports Editor
Last winter was perhaps a once in a lifetime basketball season at Smithville, when both the girls and boys went into the tournament with perfect 20-0 records.
The Smithie girls went 25-0 with a home-grown team from the farmlands of Wayne County and advanced all the way to the Div. III regional championship game.
There, they ran into a dream team of a different sort. Eventual state champ South Euclid Regina, coach Pat Diulus' latest big-city All-Star team, put a 62-41 beatdown on the overmatched Smithies. According to Regina's Web site, Diulus has sent more than 65 girls to Div. I college teams in 15 years. Smithville has never had a Div. I girls basketball recruit.
Regina went on to win its sixth girls title, giving private schools nine of the last 11 championships in Div. III.
Smithville's boys basketball team was undefeated in advancing to the Div. III regionals as well, but they lost to another parochial eventual state champ -- Cleveland Central Catholic -- a year after being topped in the Sweet 16 by private powerhouse Villa Angela-St. Joseph. The unbeaten Hiland boys also lost to a parochial last season, falling 76-68 to Lutheran East.
It's seemingly the same story in just about all sports -- private schools loading up and winning a disproportionate amount of state titles year after year, decade after decade.
"I absolutely believe it's not a level playing field, and the further along you get in the tournament the worse (the disadvantage) gets," Smithville athletic director Andy Becker said. "At a public school, you get the kids who are in your system. In private schools, they can basically take whoever they want. Not every private school recruits, but certainly there are those that do."
At the public schools in Wayne County, the superintendents here have had enough. They've heard the complaining for years, but this time they're actually trying to do something about leveling the playing field.
"I'd like to be able to look in our kids' eyes and say we're giving them a fair and equal chance to compete, but I don't think you can say that under the current structure," Dalton superintendent Scott Beatty said.
The Wayne County school leaders found in the course of regular meetings that every one of them agreed something needs to done to make OHSAA tournaments more fair.
That's why superintendents from the eight-team Wayne County Athletic League, along with Triway, Wooster and Orrville, have joined to initiate a state-wide Private vs. Public survey that was sent to every district leader in the state Dec. 17. More than 200 surveys have been returned already, with the deadline to reply by Jan. 5.
The survey
"We wanted to be respectful to the OHSAA and we let (commissioner) Dr. Dan Ross know about it beforehand," Triway superintendent Dave Rice said. "We contacted every school in Ohio with this questionnaire. First, we wanted to find out if they think there is indeed a competitive balance issue. If they think there's a problem, we asked them for opinions on how to fix it. Then, we'll decide if we want to go on to the next step."
If enough school leaders express concerns over the current tournament format, that next step would be to begin to craft a referendum that could eventually be voted on to change the way OHSAA tournaments are set up.
"That's a long way off, and could take years if we do indeed decide to go in that direction," Beatty said, "but we think it's worth putting the time and effort into."
Here are the main questions on the survey that was sent to the leaders of the OHSAA's more than 800 schools.
1. Do you believe there exists a competitive balance issue between public and non-public schools with the current tournament structure in OHSAA?
2. Would you support a system that weighs student enrollment for non-public schools (multiplier), which could potentially require non-public schools to compete in higher athletic divisions?
3. Would you support a separation of public and non-public tournaments both held and sanctioned by the OHSAA?
4. Which structure would you prefer? Multiplier or separate tournaments?
(Readers can vote on this at
www-the-daily-record.com, then click on sports)
Stats tell the unbalanced story
The statistics bear out time and again that there is a big advantage for private schools in Ohio.
Private schools account for just 8 percent of the students in Ohio, but they win a much higher percentage of team championships. Seven of the top 10 schools with the most titles are private ones and they've won approximately 60 percent of the football crowns.
Different private teams seem to load up for different sports, while some private schools seem to be pretty dominant across the board.
Consider that in Div. I wrestling, private schools have won every state title since 1978, including 13 straight for Lakewood St. Edward. Private volleyball teams have won 11 championships in a row in Div. I.
This fall, private schools won four of six football state titles and two of the four volleyball crowns.
This area's football team of the decade as voted by Daily Record readers was Orrville's 2006 squad with zero Div. I college players, which lost in a Div. IV regional to Youngstown Cardinal Mooney with eight Div. I recruits.
Many mid-sized public schools haven't had that many Div. I players in their program's history, much less on one team.
Multiply or separate?
A multiplier or separate tournaments would mean smaller schools like the WCAL's teams, or Div. IV Orrville and Triway, would be less likely to face big-city All-Star teams in the playoffs.
Of course, a school like Wooster, a small Div. I, probably wouldn't want to see some of these private powerhouses either.
Beatty and Rice realize the road to tournament equality is a long, difficult one.
"Even in our superintendents group there are different opinions on a multiplier or separate tournaments, but the important thing right now is we want to bring this to the forefront," Rice said.
"Our goal is to be open-minded," Beatty said. "We've thrown out a couple ideas, but we don't have all the answers. For there to be change, we have to have enough people agree there's a need for it in the first place.
"Academics are most important, but certainly athletics are a big part of kids' identities, too. We want what's best for our kids here in Wayne County, and specifically for me at Dalton, but want to find out if there are similar concerns at other schools statewide."
Rice said if the OHSAA tournament format is to be changed one day, every step in the process will get harder.
The superintendents' research also includes studying what's been done in other states.
Some have two separate associations (Virginia, Texas); some have separate tournaments, one association governing body (New York, New Jersey); Wisconsin recently added private schools to its association; and Missouri added a multiplier, while Georgia had one and then dropped it.
A multiplier means taking an enrollment of 100 at a private school, for instance, and multiplying it by 1.65 for an enrollment of 165 when it comes to figuring a playoff class.
Rather than group all schools together, it's been suggested at times that a "sliding scale" could be used for a multiplier so schools that attract athletes from entire regions (like Mooney, Cleveland St. Ignatius) aren't calculated in the same ways as locals like Central Christian and Kingsway Christian, which draw from much smaller areas.
The Wayne County superintendents' research found there was a proposal to have separate tournaments voted down around 1980, while a committee studied the matter in the mid-2000s but couldn't come up with a recommendation to vote on.
"This is the tip of the iceberg," Rice said. "I think if it comes to it, finding a number to use on a multiplier has been a sticking point in the past."
Well aware past efforts to change the tournament format have come up short, Rice and Beatty promised to be persistent this time.
"If somewhere down the line a public school kid has a more equal chance to compete then we can be proud of that," Rice said.
Aaron Dorksen can be reached at 330-287-1621 or adorksen@the-daily-record.com