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With 2017 officially in the books and 2018 upon us, PBR VA/DC will look ahead to the upcoming spring and the 2018 season in our Spring Forward series. In this series, we will focus primarily on players and teams that we have seen in 2017 and are looking forward to seeing again in 2018, these posts will not have anything to with prospect rankings.

Today we are going to step away from a specific look at players and look more closely at the realignment that VHSL put into effect for this season. This is third time in the last four years that VHSL has put in place significant changes, and the second time in that period with a massive change that will alter the playoff structures at all levels.

2013-2014 Realignment

Four years ago, VHSL brought an end to the old A, AA, AAA system, breaking the classifications up into six groups to match football more closely and in an effort to cut down long trips during Region and early round State Tournament games. During that realignment, VHSL did away with the old District and Region system in each classification, going from four Regions at each level to just two and changing from Districts to numbered Conferences.

This moved a lot of traditional District rivals into different classifications and generally created a ton of confusion. For example, it was easier to just say Concord District than remember District 5. The Seminole District around Lynchburg was divided across Conference 23 in 4A and Conference 30 in 3A. The Dulles District in Loudoun found itself split between 4A and 5A and old rivals separated, just to give a few examples. 

This also had the impact of doubling our number of State Champions, while removing a round in the State Tournament, meaning all State Tournament games were played on back-to-back days at the Jubilee sites. This also essentially guaranteed that State Titles would be decided by No. 2 starters and depth relievers, as opposed to the original system which often saw a team start its No. 1 on Tuesday in the quarterfinal and then roll him back out in the Championship on Saturday. The result in a few cases was some epic shootouts, with the 2016 4A State Championship game between Liberty Christian and Hanover coming to mind, where the teams combined to score 17 runs in the final two innings with their fifth and sixth pitchers on the mound.

Another detriment was not getting the opportunity to see a senior such as Halifax County's Andrew Abbott in 2017, Battlefield's Jake Agnos and Liberty Christian's Zach Hess in 2016, or Loudoun Valley's Jack DeGroat in 2015 get the chance to cap a dominant season with a Championship Game start. All of those are examples of seniors who pitched their teams to the State title game only to watch them fall one win short of a title while not being eligible to pitch.

2017-2018 Realignment

For the 2017 and 2018 school year VHSL again rolled out another major restructure. The new system will remain with six total classifications, but expand back to four Regions at each classification. As in the past, the Region Champ and Runner-up will both advance to the State Tournament, so each State Tournament will now have eight teams, giving us back that quarterfinal round that has been missing for four years. Also going away are the numbered Conferences with the return of the District system. There again have been some shifts of teams from their traditional Districts to new ones, and we will detail that more as we launch our 2018 Region Previews in February.

One of the major early drawbacks to the new system is the imbalance in some Regions within a classification. Also, some teams were moved into new Districts for the first time in decades, again changing rivalries and the balance of District strength within Regions. The third change is one that we have every two years as a handful of schools are reclassified based on their changing population, an example being third-year school Riverside moving up from 3A to 4A.

Here is a quick snapshot of the new Classifications, broken down by Region. Again, we will look more closely at District shifts when we do our Region previews later this year.

 

6a

The effort to create less travel in Region tournaments has led to a big imbalance in 6A. Region B is essentially a Richmond and Fredericksburg Region that while only having eight total schools, will get the same two State berths as the other regions. Region C and D make sense in that C is essentially the I-95 corridor schools in the north and D is the I-66 corridor schools, but unfortunately that division tore apart a Fairfax County-based Northern Region that has existed for over 30 years. As a result, we will no longer have the potential to see matchups between Lake Braddock and James Madison or West Springfield and Oakton with State Tournament berths on the line like we have for decades. On the bright side, that guarantees four State Tournament berths from teams from Fairfax, Prince William, and Arlington County.

 

5a

5A has had more members in the Richmond and Beach areas since the creation of the six classification system as the southern counties and Loudoun tend to build slightly smaller schools than Fairfax and Prince William. This alignment does cut travel down and make a ton of sense in Region A, B, and C centered on the Beach, Richmond, and Northern regions respectively. Region D still has a few head-scratchers, such as how Halifax County fits in the same region as Potomac from Prince William and newly-5A Harrisonburg, but with this many schools in the Commonwealth there is no way to completely prevent long trips.

 

4a

4A is one of the Classifications where the goals of the realignment were achieved. We end up with four pretty much equal regions that cut down significantly on tournament drives. A is made up of schools on the Peninsula and the Beach. B is Richmond and points just north. Region C is Loudoun County, Fauquier County, and Winchester area schools. And Region D is centered on Lynchburg. This ends the awkward 4A West that existed for four years and included all of the new Region C and D in the same tournament.

 

3a

3a is hard to cut down travel because of how spread out the schools are around the Commonwealth, but essentially VHSL was able to keep balanced Regions here and trim some of the travel down. Region A is made up of school in the Richmond and Peninsula area. Region B is primarily in the North and Northwestern corner. Region C is the schools between Charlottesville and Harrisonburg in the west-central portion of Virginia. Region D combines the schools along the southern I-81 corridor with the Lynchburg-area schools.

 

2a

The big shocker looking at Region A of 2A is the presence of Poquoson, who moves down from 3A. The Region divisions work here geographically as well, especially in the division of the old 2A East into the new Region A and Region B, which will make tournament trips shorter with the Region B schools primarily being in the Northwest of Virginia and the Region A schools being primarily along the I-64 corridor from Richmond to the Beach.

 

1a

1A, like 6A, has some imbalance in its Region sizes, with Region A and D being significantly larger than 10-school Region B. The vast spread of the 1A schools throughout Virginia and the goal of shorter Region tournament bus trips likely drove this imbalance.

 

 MORE SPRING FORWARD