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It wasn't too long ago when Andre Franklin and the Southampton boys basketball team were a Class A team, back during the 2016-2017 season in which they reached the state Final Four. Due to the addition of another class by the state, the Mariners will once again be a Class A school in numerous sports. MICHELLE MALONE
Beginning with the upcoming 2023-2024 school year, seven sports that were previously designated as a “five-classification sport” will have a sixth class added. Those sports include boys and girls basketball, boys and girls soccer, baseball, softball and girls volleyball.
The New York State Public High School Athletic Association approved the additional sixth class, set to be AAA and joining the AA, A, B, C an D classes, at its central committee meeting in July. Then, in November, the state’s executive committee voted on and approved the cut-off numbers for each classification, giving schools a little more of an idea of where they will stand and what their opponents might look like next season.
For some schools on the South Fork, such as Bridgehampton, a Class D school due to its low enrollment, these changes will not have much, if any, effect on their teams. For Hampton Bays, which had recently moved to and stayed a Class A school in many of the affected sports, its not expecting things to be much different, other than maybe for girls volleyball, which, depending on the numbers, could go from a “B” program to an “A” program. But, for the most part, athletic director John Foster said, his programs remain largely unaffected by the additional class.
The schools and programs that these changes will affect are the “bubble schools” that were maybe in years past at the top or bottom of the cut-off numbers. East Hampton and Westhampton Beach, two of the larger school districts on the South Fork that have been Class A schools for quite some time now, will, in most cases, be AA schools in the affected sports. Southampton, which has fluctuated between being a Class B and Class A school over the past several years, is most likely going to be an A school, and athletic director Darren Phillips expects with the new numbers that his programs will remain in that class for the foreseeable future. Pierson, meanwhile, which has been a Class C school now for well over a decade, will have the majority of its programs move up to Class B, although girls volleyball and boys soccer are expected to remain “C” programs.
While that may bring a little bit of a sticker shock to some — AA schools in the past have been the largest schools in the county, such as William Floyd, Brentwood, Longwood and Patchogue-Medford — many teams will be moving up, or down in some cases, along with many of the similar schools they have played over the years. So while East Hampton and Westhampton Beach may be making the move up from A to AA, there isn’t an expectation that they will start playing large schools like Floyd, Pat-Med or Commack. At least, that’s the thinking behind it — as Westhampton Beach Athletic Director Jason Cohen noted, the placement committee will not vote and approve anything until at least March, so how leagues and divisions will shake out are up in the air until then.
Section XI Executive Director Tom Combs as well as East Hampton Athletic Director Kathy Masterson said that while adding a classification is a big change, it’s going to benefit student-athletes across the state in the long run.
“One good thing about it is, it gives more kids an opportunity to win state championships. That’s the goal,” Masterson said. “Comparatively, when you looked around at other states, similar in size to New York or larger, and I’m not sure of the numbers exactly, but when you look at a state like Texas, they have 10 to 12 classifications. We had five in many cases. So this is going to give our kids more of an opportunity to win state championships. Is it going to throw us in with some bigger schools? It may in some cases.”
Section XI, the governing body of Suffolk County high school athletics, just this past year, implemented a geography-based league placement across the county. An initiative that was sought out highly by now retired East Hampton Athletic Director Joe Vasile-Cozzo, it placed teams in leagues based on geography rather than enrollment size, which they had been based on for many years.
For some schools in the county, the change has been a real success. But according to Combs, when the conference committees met last week, many voiced their displeasure in the geography-based leagues and how tremendously difficult it has made scheduling games and matches. Combs said the athletic council was meeting this Thursday, January 19, to vote on whether to keep geography-based leagues or go back to enrollment-based leagues, and his feeling is that it will vote to end what was a two-year trial with the geography-based leagues and go back to enrollment.
Many athletic directors on the South Fork, such as Masterson and Southampton Athletic Director Darren Phillips, liked the geography-based leagues for obvious reasons. They both thought that, if nothing else, having the leagues based on geography would help alleviate the busing issues that every single district has had to deal with over the past couple of years.
But Combs said the geography-based leagues were not helping the bus issue.
“In some cases it’s made it worse, believe it or not,” he said. “The bus issue has had a tremendous impact on our athletic teams. Schools have been forced to start games a lot later than originally scheduled and that’s definitely a major concern for everybody. But there’s a lot of different things that we can do. We can schedule more games on weekends, use more neutral sites, doubleheaders in baseball and softball. We’re going to have to be more flexible and think outside the box.
“The geography-based conferences was a two-year pilot program, but many people have a strong displeasure with it,” Combs added. “Many last week voted to end it and go back to enrollment. The final vote is Thursday, and if athletic council agrees to end it, then that’s what we’ll do. If it was benefiting all of our programs, then I think we’d stick with it. But it’s been overwhelming the amount of people that don’t like it, and with close to 60 schools in our county, we have to go with what the majority feels.”
