DAYTON, Ohio — OHSAA officials announced last month that divisions will change for multiple sports, including basketball, soccer, volleyball, baseball and softball. Divisions will be added with the idea of leveling the playing field. But how will this directly impact schools and teams?
What You Need To Know
- The OHSAA announced in February that new divisions will be added to multiple sports
- Basketball, girls volleyball, soccer, baseball and softball will all be affected
- Alter's athletic director and girls basketball coach is concerned seven divisions in girls basketball may be too many
- But for Butler High School, which has struggled as a smaller DI school, it's the change they've been waiting for
Chris Hart has been the heart of Alter girls basketball for 30 years. And in those three decades, she’s never seen as big of a change as what’s about to happen this fall.
“It’s among the biggest,” Hart said.
Hart, the head coach for the girls basketball team and the school’s athletic director, is a little hesitant for basketball to move from four divisions to seven.
“Seven seems like a lot of divisions to me," she said. "But give it a year or two, see how it works and if it works, great and if it doesn’t, I hope they’re willing to revisit it.”
But she’s no stranger to changing divisions. This year the girls basketball team changed from DII to DIII based on enrollment. She says that doesn’t change the regular season, just who they face in the tournament.
“Where we fall next year, we’re going to get our kids as prepared to make a deep run as we can through the season,” she said. “It really doesn’t matter in a sense to us if we’re division four or division five, we’re preparing the same way. Who we play will be different.”
While Hart says it won’t change much for her squad, she sees who it will help.
“I think this is going to help the schools that are in the bottom part of the current division one,” she said. “So, there are schools that are competitive but they cannot compete against the huge division one schools.”
One of those teams is Butler, just up the road in Vandalia. A Division I school that struggles to compete against bigger schools in the tournament every year.
“Having to play Springboro in the sectional finals, which is pretty much the story every year,” said Molly Bardonaro, the girls basketball head coach at Butler. “It’s we want to go in, try to get a win, get a couple wins and then we know, unfortunately, that our road is going to be shortened.”
Despite being co-champs of their division this year and compiling an 18-4 record, they couldn’t make it past the second round.
“It’s very defeating because we know going into it, it’s going to take a miracle,” Bardonaro said.
Which is why this change is such a big deal for her team.
“Finally! It’s about time!” she said.
Butler has only made a regional final twice in the last 26 years, including when Bandonaro was a player. She’s hopeful this change will give her team a fighting chance to make it past the first round or two.
“It doesn’t mean that we’re going to have a walk to state or anything,” she said. “It’s just going to be really, really nice to be able to see what we can do against teams our size, comparable to us.”
At Alter, other concerns, including the potential to host, which could affect other sports since they have just one gym, is another reason Hart is hesitant. But she knows change is necessary as sports continue to rapidly evolve.
“A lot of other things are changing,” Hart said. “I think the OHSAA is probably just trying to recognize that everything isn’t the same as it used to be 20 years or 30 years ago and they need to kind of catch up a little bit with the times.”
Assignments to new divisions won’t be announced until a later date, but will go into effect in the fall.