TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – St. Thomas Aquinas football has won seven straight state titles. Chaminade-Madonna has won seven in the last nine years. Dominant streaks like that are a reason many in Florida felt a way to level the playing field was long overdue.
“We’ve been talking about it and rehearsing it and vetting it for about two years now,” said Ricky Bell, who is on the Board of Directors and is also the head football coach at Leon High School. “Now it’ll be a reality this fall.”
The reality is an Open Division, which the Florida High School Athletic Association’s Board of Directors voted to pass unanimously on Tuesday.
“Maybe it does get us closer to that, maybe it creates a competitive style we all want, or it’s just a unique opportunity for eight teams to match up and play,” said Florida High head football coach Jarrod Hickman. “We’ll see how that goes.”
“To have the top teams face off, there’s a lot of interesting scenarios,” added Mike Posey, the Athletic Director and head baseball coach at North Florida Christian. “I know some coaches will probably be against it, some for it, but it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.”
The top eight teams according the MaxPreps rankings, on the Maxpreps website, regardless of classification, separate into the Open Division at the end of the regular season, playing for their own state title.
“Being a coach inside of it, you’re torn a little bit about that,” said Hickman.
Hickman’s Seminoles play in Class 2A, the same division Chaminade-Madonna is in, and with the Lions potentially removed from the 2A playoffs, that would open the door for others to compete.
“Matching up with a big school in a fun conversation is good, but I don’t know if that’s what is best for everybody and I think we’ll all figure that out this year.”
And it’s not just football impacted.
“I don’t know if we would have been the overall champion, but we were dominantly the best team in 5A.”
Girls volleyball one of ten sports outside of football that will also have the Open Division. Chiles has won back-to-back Class 5A state titles, but head coach Kaitlin Jahn is certain it’s not what’s best for volleyball.
“It was intended to help schools outside of those metro areas, a place like Tallahassee of Pensacola, coaches have been complaining and board members have noticed that those schools don’t get a shot at a state championship,” she said. “We are here to say we can compete with those schools.”
And if Chiles were to make the top eight?
“Your next 7A state champion or 3A state champion, are they really a state champion?” she asked. “We don’t know, because the best teams in that division have been taken out of the equation.”
Outside of football, the Open Division teams are decided by the FHSAA Power Rankings by Maxpreps, which are on the FHSAA’s website. The top eight teams in all other sports will be decided after district tournaments.
All sports will utilize a pool play system in the Open Division. Teams in the top eight would compete in two pools of four teams each.
Pool A will include seeds 1, 4, 5 and 8, while Pool B will include seeds 2, 3, 6 and 7. Each team will be guaranteed at least one home contest in pool play. At the conclusion of pool play, the top two teams from each pool will advance to the State Finals host site for a single-elimination tournament to determine a state champion.
Travel is another worry amongst coaches.
“The travel budget for high school sports cannot accommodate that,” said Jahn. “You could be playing two games, back to back weeks, Tallahassee to Miami.”
“It’s going to be an administrative nightmare if you’re traveling all over the state three or four weeks in a row,” added Posey. “If you had a school that was that was football, volleyball, and baseball, that’d be a real budget buster.”
But the reality? The Open Division is here.
“For us, coach speak, you have to worry about the first ten, and go from there,” said Hickman.
Football and volleyball will be the first sports to test the Open Division in the fall.
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