11-Man Small School Ball

Not sure exactly what your asking but...

We have 250 kids we are small school ball division 8 in Michigan... I would quantify small school ball in Michigan being either Division 4 and below or division 5 and below.... Ultimately, even these numbers don't jive I do believe dynamics change over 800 students, 1500 students, and certainly over 2000 students although their are numerous other factors that have greater impacts then enrollment, IMO...

Despite our enrollment we play 4 schools near or over 400 students and another school near 1500 students next fall...

If the school that belongs in the larger division has success at a lower division, how much success do they need to have to move back up a division?

We have schools of 150 or less play 11 man. They qualify for 8 man but some don't want to play 8 man. Those usually have a rich history of football and don't want to move down. We can co-op but that can bump you up so schools that are on the border of moving up a class will not co-op. Played 11 man with a squad as small as 17 and 8 man with a squad as small as 10.

Completely arbitrarily I would say in our state "small school ball" is Divisions 7-8 and 8-man, enrollments 371 and below this year.

In NY there are 5 size classes. AA, A, B, C, and D. We are a larger D school with 80 kids in our graduating class this past year. Schools with as low as 45 kids graduating play 11 man, at least in our section.

in SC we have 5 classifications... AAAAA down to A.  

We just went to 5A a couple of years ago... it cleared up some funky split classifications b/c of football.

Based on Average Daily Enrollment from 2020 cycle:
5A is the top 40 teams in 8 regions/conferences.  Enrollment from 1303-3093.  That largest school is going to split this year...
4A is 40 teams in 7 regions/conferences.  Enrollment from 916-1292.
3A is 46 teams in 8 regions/conferences.  Enrollment from 514-916.
2A is 40 teams in 7 regions/conferences.  Enrollment from 325-557.
1A is 41 teams in 7 regions/conferences.  Enrollment from 61-325.

When you get into 1A size, there are several tech/charter schools that have some sports but no football (about 9).  The numbers I gave are schools that field 11 man football.  In the 1A there are 10 schools that field 11 man teams with less than 150 kids in the HS.  Most of these are towns that that have had some kind of history... especially a sports history.  

The link to these numbers can be found here: LINK
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This does NOT include the private/independent league SCISA

It's the rural south.  Some of it is trying to get geographic region/conferences (second decision).  There aren't enough metropolitan areas (if you can call them that) in the state.  You only really have 5 major city foot prints and then you have vast swaths of open land.  

The SCHSL does  a 2 year ADA and that is the 1st basis for grouping the classifications.  The next is geography.  Schools can petition to change classifications (usually DOWN but not always) but almost always it you want to move down you have to get another school that will agree to move up.  

Oh and my numbers are just for the 11 man public (SCHSL) league.  The private (SCISA) league has both an 11 man grouping and an 8 man grouping.

Coach do you know why 3A is grouped with 46 schools and the others all at 40/41 (even numbers)...  On paper it seems though the numbers work to have everyone at 41/42....    

I have several buddies coaching in SC and my wife and I have considered heading either there or Georgia for a retirement gig in a few years so I follow both states closely and have been curious on this since they aligned these.

coachjm

Background: SC has been divided between the 'Upstate' and the 'Low State' (or Up County/Low Country).  That isn't a north/south thing more of an eastish/westish division based on geography.  (look up where the 'fall line' is located in the state and that is geographic division between the 2).  
Also there was always 8 regions (mostly) in each of the classifications; 4 Upstate, 4 Low State, and that made the playoff nice and evenly split up with numbers of schools for the post season.  This worked reasonable well until in the 1980s when there was some school districts that had consolidated and a few areas had started seeing massive growth.  From there the convoluted splits started to emerge I mentioned previously.

When realignment takes place (every 2 years) the first thing considered is size of the school.  The 2nd is geographic proximity as the school are grouped into the regions with each classification.  School can appeal to move up or down classification and also appeal the geographic region they are placed.  Also there are some schools that might appeal based traditional rivalries.  

Over the past 10 years or so there has been a lot made over the size disparity between the smallest and largest schools within certain classifications, and that was the impetus to push for the state to move from 4 classifications to 5 (as well as other sports wanting more trophies).  In my opinions we don't currently have enough schools for 5 classifications, and especially in the low country it only exacerbates the problems with the distances in some the geographic regions.  There was a counter proposal to move to 3 classifications and then split into 6 different playoffs for ALL sports (each class having a D1 & D2) that would have really been the best of both worlds having to consider size and geographic proximity.... but that just made TOO much sense....

To finally answer your question about AAA, it is a little bit of everything; geography, size, rivalry, and even playoff splits.  If you look at/know the schools in that class it just makes sense.  When the league 1st went to 5 classes, they tried to make the 3 middle ones all have 48 schools, with 5A having around 40... that just screwed the little schools.  Again IMHO we don't have enough schools.  

How many of you guys have classifications based on male enrollment?

SC does not.  Back when numbers mattered for playoff points if we were to play a team that was an all boys schools we simply doubled that number.

If they have football and play in the state association, they play 11 man. I think the smallest is about 150 students, grades 9-12. There are several with enrollments under 200 who play in our smallest classification, which tops out at about 400.

We only have a handful of small private schools and co-op programs who play 8 man because people in our state don’t think of it as “real footballl.” They either play as independents or in smaller independent leagues. Due to travel, they are mostly in the Nashville and Memphis areas.

I believe those numbers only refer to the enrollment numbers in grades 9-11.  Once you get into the AA and A classes it can get kind of tough to group schools geographically.  I coach baseball at a AA school and our closest region opponent is 45 minutes away with the farthest being about 2 and a half hours.  There are two AA schools that are about thirty minutes away from us but they are are both in a different region than us. I would guess that outside of each other their average trip for a region game is probably closer to an hour and a half at least.