Playing the ‘Numbers Game’

For all the talk, all the anticipation and the guesswork, a new system is finally here.

Beginning this month, South Carolina will have five classifications for the first time. It is the most significant change since a fourth class was added in 1968, and regardless how big or small the Grand Strand’s 12 area schools were or what region they ended up in, everyone needed to adjust in a hurry.

The area’s three largest schools were kept in the same grouping as before, but left with one less regular season game and a lack of a split state title. What was previously the biggest grouping of local schools was divided somewhat and placed into a division where only four games will impact who qualifies for the playoffs.

Georgetown used travel considerations to successfully appeal their region placement in what was essentially a drop in classification to join the likes of Aynor, Loris and Waccamaw. Meanwhile, Carvers Bay became one of the smallest teams in the new Class 2A and Green Sea Floyds found itself on even more of an island.

Nobody was immune to change.

Just what all that meant for all has been analyzed ad nauseam for 53 weeks since the S.C. High School League (SCHSL) released its initial region projections and then, for the most part, kept them intact. Now, we see how it plays out.

BIG BOYS GET FEWER TOYS

Chuck Jordan spent a portion of the CNB Kickoff Classic news conference last Tuesday on his feelings about realignment.

There isn’t a man in the area who had more vested in change than the Conway coach.

Over the course of the last decade, Jordan proposed idea after idea to his cohorts, pleading with them to stave off the growing inequality in enrollments that not even an expanding number of schools could prevent.

He wanted six classifications.

Five is all he and the coaches of his ilk received. Conway, with its 1,618 students, according to the SCHSL’s average daily membership figures used for the current realignment, was left with mammoths the like of Wando (4,065 students), Dorman (3,219) and Summerville (2,878) – not to mention region foe Carolina Forest, the seventh-largest school in the state with 2,239 students.

The Tigers have rarely lost to their neighbor down U.S. 501 over the years, and they dismantled Summerville during a scrimmage earlier this preseason. In Jordan’s mind, though, he’s always been concerned about the long play, not short-term results.

“Four classifications was broken,” said Jordan, who also served as the school’s athletic director for more than three decades. “There were too many state champions for our size of state. When you get down into 1A and 2A and still have two state championships, it’s a joke. As a result, everyone knew something needed to change.”

Jordan spent time both as the head of athletic directors in the old Class 4A and leading South Carolina’s primary football committee. Beginning in 2011 with the addition of another title awarded in Class 2A, the state was delving out seven trophies among four classifications, and Jordan became infinitely more vocal about his plan.

It allowed more teams to play for a title, but as he’s said numerous times over the years, it watered them down and also penalized schools during their regular seasons. Specifically, region schedules frequently paired schools whose enrollments differed by 1,000 students or more.

Fewer than 200 students separate current Region VI-5A teams Conway, Socastee, South Florence and West Florence. But the difference between those schools and region cohorts Carolina Forest and Sumter is as much as three times that. It may not have always impacted football, but other sports surely have suffered against the numbers game.

Maybe the biggest change that all those six football teams – and the 36 others who remained in the state’s largest class – will now feel, however, has nothing to do with size. Instead, it was the subtractions from those within the division.

Having one championship means schools with enrollments differing by up to 2,400 students are now competing for the same title, a problem that can’t be fixed without busting up those top three mega-campuses. Just as noticeable was the elimination of one regular-season game for the state’s largest class.

For the first time since 1987, when Class 4A moved to an 11-game slate, all teams in the state will play 10 games before the playoffs. It made scheduling easier in that they needed to sign contracts for one less game in every two-year block. But it also took some gate money away from everyone.

Jordan was OK with the tradeoff.

“We’re going to take 32 teams out of 42,” he said of the number of teams who qualify for the postseason. “There’s still that opportunity for that 11th game. If you can’t make the 4A or 5A playoffs, you don’t deserve that 11th game.”

THE FOUR-GAME SEASON

In the new Class 4A, which was whittled down to 42 schools, the regular season took a significant hit.

The classification was formed from the bulk of the old 3A teams and boosted to its grand total with the leftover members of the old Class 4A. But because of proximity and travel, the SCHSL elected to approve an eight-region system, something it only also did with the new 45-member Class 3A.

But in Class 4A, six of the eight regions were turned into five-team groupings. That equates to a four-game region schedule, one that will ultimately determine who finishes where and who is in the playoffs.

With no points system, 60 percent of the regular season just turned into “Friday Night Lites,” a large portion of the schedule where the winner or loser knows the result impacts nothing more than bragging rights.

“Personally, I would rather be in a larger region,” St. James coach Robby Brown said. “I’d rather have a larger number of games. We have four region games. I just think you need five or six. We’ve got about five weeks to be our peak, to be ready to go. You tell them the truth – that our region games are what going to determine if we go to the playoffs. That’s when we’ll start scheming more.”

Brown isn’t the only coach who hinted at keeping more in his back pocket until the region schedule commences. Going vanilla takes some of the credence off game tape and maybe allows coaches to sneak something past the staff on the other sideline.

Teams with lighter rosters or a lack of depth may also elect to work around that during the first six games. After all, a quarterback who sprains an ankle or a linebacker who suffers a concussion late in the year could automatically miss half the region games during an eight-day span.

Motivation is also a factor.

“You’re always going to run into some of those games, especially those non-region games, where it’s going to be tough to get them excited about playing them,” Myrtle Beach’s Mickey Wilson said. “The fortunate thing that we have on our schedule is that we have a lot of rivalry games – Carolina Forest, Conway and Socastee. So that really helps get your team up. And then playing a team like Byrnes, one of the top teams in the country, I think our kids will be excited about that. I think they’ll be ready to play. We’re lucky in that we have 5A teams that are close.”

Not everyone has Wilson’s approach to scheduling larger teams, however.

Of North Myrtle Beach’s six non-region games, only two (vs. Loris, at Socastee) could be described as rivalry contests. The other four are against three out-of-area opponents and Carvers Bay, one of the smallest schools in the new Class 2A.

St. James did a better job about keeping things close, playing five of its six against teams from Horry or Georgetown County, as well as another against former region foe Lake City. That happened at the expense of none of the six sharing a classification, including four members of the new Region VI-3A.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THOSE SMALLER GUYS?

Aynor coach Jody Jenerette’s comments at the CNB news conference drew plenty of laughs.

And then reality set it.

Did Georgetown, in an attempt to save itself a considerable chunk of change via travel costs, really “win” its appeal to the SCHSL last fall when it successfully petitioned the organization to move it to Region VI-AAA? Sure, the Bulldogs’ football team (as well as the school’s other sports) wouldn’t have to spend an average of 15 extra miles per region road game on buses. However, powerhouse Dillon, a four-time defending state football champion not expected to be all that affected by a bump to Class 3A, would be on the schedule each fall.

It created a grouping in which The Sun News coverage area still has a region with four teams (the old “Beach 3A” region tended to draw plenty of attention before getting broken up some), but the common opinion, at least when it comes to football, is that all of them are going to routinely play for second place.

“Yes, our region got tougher because we have Georgetown and Lake City and Dillon and Waccamaw and Aynor and us,” Loris coach Jamie Snider said. “I think our region is pretty tough. But everything still goes through Dillon. The state championship still goes through Dillon.”

In the three smaller classifications, many of those same comparisons have been made since the appeals were finalized and the divisions were put into stone for the next two-year block. There were power teams who have in recent years established themselves above the bulk of their regular season opponents.

And then there were others who have struggled to keep up with the Joneses.

It is fair to say, then, that the two smallest schools in The Sun News’ coverage area may not have been done any favors with realignment.

Carvers Bay was bumped up to Class 2A, but barely. Just two schools in the state, first-year full-fledged SCHSL member Gray Collegiate and Allendale-Fairfax, have lower enrollments in the classification.

Keenan, the biggest school in the new Class 2A, has 698 students according to figures the SCHSL used for realignment. That’s 58 percent more than Carvers Bay’s 408.

Then there’s the situation at Green Sea Floyds, where football coach Tony Sullivan always knew his location was going to be a hurdle that needed to be cleared.

The tiny school has about 328 students, or 500 or so fewer than the next closest program in Horry County. The Trojans’ Grand Strand semi-neighbor, Carvers Bay, is a solid hour away. So when realignment for the new five-class system was unveiled and Sullivan and athletics director Jason Cox found themselves as the last area team in the state’s smallest classification, many of those same feelings returned.

“It puts a little more distance between us and everyone else in the county,” Sullivan said. “At the same time, it makes us unique. We’ve always been that area that was ostracized anyway because we’re the farthest north and west in the county. It’s one of those things, when you talk to people, ‘Oh, you have to go to Green Sea today.’ But we love it that way.

“The numbers are an illusion. Our numbers haven’t changed; the classification has.”

And now it’s time to see how everyone deals with it.

This story was originally published August 13, 2016 at 5:12 PM with the headline "Playing the ‘Numbers Game’."