Congratulations are in order for the Wheeling Park High School football team. The Patriots -- before they even take their first snap of the 2024 season -- appear to be playoff-bound.
Unless something changes in the coming days, Wheeling Park is guaranteed a spot in the 16-team Class AAAA playoff bracket. How? There are now only 16 teams remaining in that new classification.
Last week, the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission reclassified nine teams previously in Class AAAA, moving them to Class AAA. Those nine schools -- John Marshall is one -- appealed their Class AAAA designations to the WVSSAC.
The absurdity of the SSAC's decision is clear particularly when you consider the size of the other three classes. Classes AAA and AA both have 31 teams. Class A has 34. The classifications in West Virginia are based on a formula that accounts 80% for enrollment, 10% for socioeconomic status and 10% for distance from a city with at least 10,000 people.
Is there that much of a gap between the Class AAAA teams and the rest of the state's football-playing schools that every other classification is now double the size? Is there that much of a gap between the Class AAAA schools and the nine moved to Class AAA?
The SSAC says it will reexamine the classes after this season. Anyone on the WVSSAC Board of Directors with a connection to Wheeling Park -- and that includes Park Principal Meredith Dailer and Wheeling resident Robert Dunlevy -- should push to force the plan back to the drawing board, for a number of reasons.
Geographically, Wheeling Park is marooned compared to almost all of the other Class AAAA teams. The AAAA schools nearest to Park are in Monongalia County (Morgantown and University) and Wood County (Parkersburg and Parkersburg South.)
The other 11 schools are in the Eastern Panhandle (six -- Musselman, Spring Mills, Martinsburg, Hedgesville, Jefferson and Washington), Woodrow Wilson in Beckley, and four in the greater Kanawha Valley (George Washington, Hurricane, Huntington and Cabell Midland.)
Why does that matter? Because the SSAC's playoff formula assigns more points for playing larger teams. A Class AAAA team is worth 15 points, while a Class AAA team is worth 12. Smaller classes are worth even fewer points.
So while Park is guaranteed a playoff spot this year, it must either hit the road to play more teams in its class or, if it wants to play local teams to save on travel, it risks playoff positioning.
So how did this happen? Some teams that were in the big school classification simply couldn't field a competitive team when pitted against the bigger schools. The one-time transfer rule also made a difference. And then there's the added money that comes in by playing an additional 15 playoff games with the new classification. Don't leave that out of the equation.
In the end, it's this simple: West Virginia is too small of a state to viably field four classifications. Cutting back to three leads to easier scheduling and easier travel for the students. If the WVSSAC wants to keep four classes in football, it must even out those classes to field a larger Class AAAA.
This season's classifications must be a one-year aberration. The SSAC needs to develop a better plan once this campaign is over. As it stands now, all this process did was create a whole new host of issues.