VHSL Baseball Championships - A change in the playoff system

By Sammy Serrano
Director of Scouting - Virginia/D.C.

The VHSL has moved from a 3-classification system to a 6-classification system.  The Spring baseball playoffs are underway and many teams are experiencing this new alignment for the first time.  Schools are now pitted up against schools that they may have never had to play in Conference or Regional play in the past.  The landscape of the playoffs looks different than in past years.

In the past the VHSL awarded 3 state champions, (A,AA,AAA).  Schools were aligned by their student population in three classes.  These groupings have had state championship opponents in the past who had 1600 students in their hallways compete against a school with 3000 plus students at the AAA level.    
The VHSL Alignment Committee and Executive Committee designed and approved a new format, which now has closed the gap by creating six classes (which means six state champions in baseball 1A-6A).   There are 52 teams in Class 3A, 4A, 5A, and 6A, 51 schools in Class 2A and 49 in Class 1A for baseball. The classification system was based solely on student population.   Each classification system will consist of eight conferences and two regions (ex. 6A North and 6A South). 

Conference tournament play format– The conference tournament was developed so all teams have the opportunity to compete for a spot in the regional playoffs.  Many schools may not play the schools in their conference during the regular season, which could cause an exciting conference tournament with some teams never being matched up against each other from the regular season.  Other conferences have the opportunity to compete against conference schools during the regular season, which will also allow for an interesting tournament with outcomes and scouting from previous games impacting coaches’ decision making in the conference tournament.

Regional tournament play will determine which two schools will represent their particular region in the state championship semifinals. Each region can determine the tournament format (ex. 8 team bracket, 16 team bracket, etc.)    After the end of regional tournament play, each region will have two schools ranked 1 and 2 who will match up against the other region in the same classification.  The 1 seeded team will compete against the 2 seeded team from the other region.
State tournament play will be held at three locations with 1A and 2A paired together, 3A and 4A paired together and 5A and 6A paired together at the Spring Jubilee sites.    

Needless to say, playoffs will create new rivalries and will be fun to watch.  Stay tuned for up to date playoff information.