Home WPIAL 2022 WPIAL Realignment Scenarios

2022 WPIAL Realignment Scenarios

by Ian

The time has once again come for the biennial WPIAL realignment. The PIAA released the new enrollment classifications last week and the WPIAL will announce new conference alignments next week. The biggest story has been Aliquippa’s fight against the PIAA which is trying to force the 1A-sized Quips up into 5A next cycle. Aliquippa’s enrollment level fell in the 1A range since the state moved to six classifications in 2016. The Quips voluntarily opted to play up in 3A the first two cycles, before the PIAA enacted a “success formula” that could move teams to a higher classification if they went deep enough in the state tournament and had a certain number of “transfers.” After the Quips won the 3A state title in 2018, they were forced up into 4A for the 2020-2021 cycle. They repeated the feat this past season by winning the 4A state title and now are in the crosshairs to be moved up once again, pending an appeal to the PIAA governing board.

In order to realign all 560 football-playing teams in the state, the PIAA collects enrollment figures from every school counting the number of 9th-11th grade boys currently enrolled. They take those numbers and order them from greatest to least and roughly divide teams into 6 equal classifications of about 93 teams each. The WPIAL, which is “District 7” of the 12 PIAA Districts, has traditionally aligned its conferences based on where teams fall within the statewide enrollment. The WPIAL has done this because it has typically had enough members in each classification to fill a full schedule. However, that will be changing this year.

Classification Changes

The biggest change the WPIAL will see is that Class 6A will only have five teams in the next cycle – defending State Champions Mt. Lebanon, three-time WPIAL finalist Central Catholic, North Allegheny, Seneca Valley, and Canon-McMillan. Three teams that were in 6A last cycle (Baldwin, Hempfield, and Norwin) saw their enrollment fall below the threshold of the highest classification and will be in 5A. All told, 33 of the 117 WPIAL teams will be changing classifications this cycle. Of those 33, only 7 will be moving up in class – the aforementioned Aliquippa to 5A and two-time defending 3A State Champions Central Valley to 4A are both being forced up by the PIAA Success formula. Five teams moving up due to enrollment are: Plum (4A to 5A), North Catholic (3A to 4A), Ambridge (3A to 4A), Shady Side Academy (2A to 3A), and Imani Christian (1A to 2A). Imani is an interesting case. They are one of the smallest schools in the WPIAL by pure enrollment, but when factoring in their co-operative agreements for football with other schools, their enrollment lands them at the 2A level. Woodland Hills (5A), Seton LaSalle (3A), and Serra Catholic (2A) have opted to voluntarily play up this cycle above their enrollment classifications.

If Aliquippa loses their appeal and remains in 5A, the classification will increase from 18 to 19 teams this cycle. While 3 teams are moving down from 6A and 2 are moving up from 4A, 4 teams will be moving down to 4A – West Allegheny, Kiski, Latrobe, and Connellsville. Class 4A will see a decrease from 22 to 21 teams as Belle Vernon, West Mifflin, Greensburg Salem, Knoch, and Beaver all move down to 3A. The number of 3A teams will shrink from 20 to 19 as Keystone Oaks, Derry, Burrell, and Yough will be moving down to 2A. Class 2A will also be shrinking – from 27 to 23 teams as Laurel, South Side Beaver, Summit Academy, Chartiers-Houston, Carlynton, Frazier, and Beth-Center will all be moving down to 1A. Additionally, Brownsville opted out of the WPIAL this cycle and will play an independent schedule. Class 1A will see a somewhat dramatic increase from 24 to 30 teams.

Realignment Possibilities

The WPIAL has a few options available to consider for realignment. In the past, they have organized teams by classification first and then by geographic regions. Last cycle, the WPIAL broke from tradition and created conferences of different sizes to better align teams based on geography. They could continue with the Status Quo realignment for this cycle, but having only 5 teams in Class 6A means those teams will only have 4 conference games on the schedule, less than half of the 9-game regular season. Another possibility would be to consider creating conferences that include teams from multiple conferences, then using a Power Rankings formula (like many other districts use) to determine the playoff qualifiers. This would enable more geographic and traditional rivalries to continue and would also decrease travel time. Below are potential alignments that I brainstormed for both scenarios. Please note these are not official WPIAL alignments, just ideas that I have worked through over the last week.

Status Quo Alignments

In the traditional alignment, 6A is straightforward with just 5 teams. If this is the route the WPIAL goes, they could potentially partner with the Pittsburgh City League (District 8) and District 10 to schedule games. There is one 6A team in District 8 (Allderdice) and four in District 10 (Erie, McDowell, Butler, and Cathedral Prep). Altogether that would make for 10 6A teams in Western Pennsylvania that could schedule games against each other.

I will note that for purposes of these alignments I am working under the assumption that Aliquippa is a 5A school, because that is where the PIAA has classified them currently. These can easily be changed if they remain in 4A instead. In fact, Aliquippa in 5A is a bit of a geographic outlier. Moon is the closest school at just 10 miles away, but the next-closest are either Pine-Richland (20 miles away) or South Fayette (25 miles away). With 19 teams in 5A, I kept them in 3 conferences. Ultimately, I decided to put Aliquippa with the southern teams, keeping Moon in the same conference, though they also could have gone with the northern schools. Teams like Penn Hills and Plum could have gone either with the north or east schools while Baldwin and Woodland Hills have played with the southern schools before and could have gone with either the east or south. Ultimately, I landed on a relatively even split between the conferences.

With 21 teams in 4A this cycle, the realignments enable a relatively easy geographic split with 7 teams per conference. The Big Eight conference lost Belle Vernon and West Mifflin but gains Latrobe and Connellsville. The Parkway Conference was the smallest in 4A last year with just 6 teams but with Aliquippa (potentially) moving up and Beaver moving down, it gains West Allegheny, Central Valley, and Ambridge within its natural geographic footprint. Finally, the Greater Allegheny Conference lost Greensburg Salem and Knoch but gains Kiski and North Catholic – both within their normal geographic footprint.

Last cycle 3A had three conferences. However, in the interest of keeping at least 6 teams in each conference, there was not an easy way geographically to divide the 19 teams into groups of 6, 6, and 7. Therefore, I opted to create just two larger conferences, one covering the area south of the Monongahela and the other covering the Ohio Valley and northern regions. When one looks at the teams on a map, this was the easiest divide.

In 2A, I contracted from four conferences down to three. With 23 teams it was once again relatively easy to break them down into groups of 8, 8, and 7. The Midwestern Conference stayed almost the same with the only change being Laurel dropping to 1A and Western Beaver sliding over from the Three Rivers Conference. The remaining 15 teams were divided in an east-west manner between the other two conferences. Steel Valley, Serra Catholic, Ligonier Valley, and Apollo-Ridge were all previously part of the Allegheny conference and were joined by Westmoreland County schools Burrell, Yough, and Derry who move down from 3A, along with Imani Christian which fits within their geographic footprint. The third conference is somewhat a merger between the Interstate Conference and the Three Rivers Conference, adding in Keystone Oaks who moves down from 3A to 2A.

Finally, with 30 teams now in 1A I had to split them between four separate conferences. The Big Seven Conference of Beaver Valley teams fit together relatively easily. The difficulty came in trying to determine how to address the Tri-County South, which now has 10 teams within its geographic footprint. One option would be to place all 10 of those teams in one conference and have them only play each other during the regular season. This would move Avella and Monessen into the TCS from where I have them aligned. Instead, I chose to keep the conferences roughly the same size. The core of the Eastern Conference (Clairton, Jeannette, GCC, Leechburg, Springdale, Riverview) remains together with defending WPIAL Champions Bishop Canevin moving over to join other teams in Washington County and southwestern Allegheny County region.

Alignments by Geography

This section needs some explanation. My over-arching goal in putting together these alignments was to organize teams by geography and to not have more than two classifications in any given conference. That meant as much as possible, I tried to avoid having teams from 4A in a class with teams from 2A. That said, there were a few instances where the geographic fits required three different classifications within a conference. As much as possible, I also tried to make sure at least 2 teams from a given classification were in each conference. There were only a few instances where a conference had just one team from a classification. I also tried to organize the 117 teams into conferences of either 7 or 8 teams. This would mean that for all WPIAL teams, 8 of the 9 regular season weeks would be “conference” opponents. After I break down the conferences I will discuss how I would determine playoff qualification.

The Conferences

Organizing teams regionally became a much easier task with the top classifications. The Northern Conference fell into place very easily, as did the Big East. The only real decision was whether to put Penn Hills in the Northern or Big East. I was able to reunite the old Parkway Conference with the addition of Moon. This also gives Aliquippa a schedule of mostly 4A teams and much better travel for both the Quips and Moon as opposed to only a conference of 5A teams. Woodland Hills has played with the Great Southern teams before but is a more natural geographic fit in the Big East while the 7 schools in the South Hills mostly all played each other last year anyways.

Ambridge was a natural fit in the Parkway, but I wanted to keep the conferences to 7 or 8 teams, which dropped the Bridgers down to the Ohio Valley Conference, which is a better fit competitively. I was able to keep the Big Eight Conference mostly in tact and also recreate the old Keystone Conference. The Greater Allegheny had 7 4A teams so I opted not to include just one team from another classification. Even though the Keystone combined teams from three different classifications, they were a natural geographic fit as mostly teams from Westmoreland and Fayette Counties.

The remaining 3A teams were able to fit nicely together into the Allegheny and Century Conferences with some 2A teams that were in close geographic proximity. Additionally, some of those teams had either just moved down to 2A or were among the top 2A squads from last season, so playing in a conference with 3A teams shouldn’t be too much of an adjustment. The Midwestern Conference was essentially the Lawrence County league plus Summit Academy.

The biggest challenge was what to do with the teams in the southern Washington/Greene/Fayette county footprint. In addition to the 10 1A schools, teams like Charleroi, Waynesburg, and Yough were close geographically as well. Ultimately, I put Frazier and Monessen in the Interstate Conference (Monessen and Charleroi being separated by just a bridge made sense to put them together). Even though Imani is now classified as a 2A school, I kept them with the 1A Eastern Conference where they have played the last six years.

Playoff Qualification

Now, since this would be a radical change to the WPIAL alignments, the system of playoff qualification would also require some tweaking. My proposal would be to use a similar system to District 6, just with a slight adjustment. It is mostly similar to how Gardner Points are currently calculated. I call it “Gardner Points-Plus.”

In the traditional Gardner Points formula, teams receive 100 points per victory then 10 points per victory that each team they defeated had. My “Gardner Points-Plus” (GP+) formula would change the 100 points per victory to 100 points if a team beat a team in their classification. That 100 number for a victory would increase or decrease by 20 points depending on the classification difference between teams. So if a 5A team defeated a 3A team, there is a 2 class difference so they would only receive 60 points for that victory (plus 10 for every victory the 3A team had). Conversely, if the 3A team defeated the 5A team, they would receive 140 points for the victory (plus 10 for every victory the 5A team had). The final portion of the Gardner Points-Plus formula would be a factor for games played. The cumulative total Gardner Points-Plus earned would be divided by the number of games played. Teams would then be ranked based on their GP+ earned over the season.

For playoff qualification, based on where the WPIAL teams enter the state bracket, the WPIAL would set the number of playoff qualifiers in each classification. Teams that win their conferences would automatically qualify for the playoffs, regardless of which classification they are in. Then, the rest of the playoff qualifiers would be filled in based on the GP+ standings for that classification. The WPIAL would then seed the playoff qualifiers and determine which teams got byes and home games.

As an example, using the above conferences, there are 21 WPIAL 4A teams. Assuming, like last cycle, the WPIAL champion would enter the PIAA 4A bracket in the semifinals, there could be 4 rounds of WPIAL playoffs. Let’s say the WPIAL decides 12 4A teams will make the playoffs. There are 5 different conferences featuring 4A teams, so if 4A teams would win all 5 of those conferences they would have 5 automatic qualifiers and 7 playoff teams determined by the GP+ formula. If only 1 of those conferences was won by a WPIAL team (the Greater Allegheny Conference has only 4A teams), then 11 of the 12 playoff spots would be filled by the top-ranked teams in the GP+ formula.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the WPIAL will probably continue to align their conferences based purely on classification and region. Last year showed that their alternative playoff alignments can work. The WPIAL’s adjustments to scheduling before the 2020 season proved incredibly beneficial when the season was truncated due to COVID. Back-loading conference games kept more teams in the playoff hunt deeper into the season and was all-around a positive development. The Aliquippa situation is still up in the air, but in either scenario they can be easily slotted in to a conference. In the traditional status quo setup they can either go to the 5A northern or southern conference while in 4A they could land right back in the Parkway. In the alignments based on geography, they could stay in the same conference regardless of classification. While everything in this post is just my own thoughts and opinions, I do think moving towards alignments based on geography is worth considering and may even help schools like Uniontown, Brownsville, and Albert Gallatin come back to the WPIAL after playing independently.

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