IHSA committee likely to recommend bracketing changes

An ad hoc committee made up of IHSA staff members and athletic directors from around the state will likely be recommending the end of predetermined regionals in all bracketed sports as well as a change in the format for the football playoffs.

IHSA assistant executive secretary Craig Anderson, who is leading the committee, said the recommendations could come as early as the association's board of directors meeting on April 20.

In all bracketed sports, the committee is prepared to recommend the format change to sub-sectionals instead of predetermined regionals in those sectional fields that currently use predetermined regionals.

"We were charged with looking at the formatting and seeding process and we're looking at all team bracketed sports," Anderson said. "The committee is seeing if there's a better way, a more fair way, with it still being understood that travel has to be considered."

Travel has been a greater concern in the postseason process since the advent of the three-and four class system in 2007-08. The distance of some regional and sectional sites has been excessive to some schools but Anderson said there has not been any serious consideration given to the same format being used statewide.

"The difficulty of that is the travel it would create," Anderson said. "We would see that in all sports."

Currently, schools placed in a sectional that also involves schools outside Cook, Kane, DuPage, Lake or Will counties are placed in predetermined regionals with each regional having its own seeding while others are in a sectional complex, which is seeded in its entirety.

With sub-sectionals, that would change so that those schools currently in predetermined regionals would become part of a larger sub-sectional within the sectional, Anderson said. It would be similar to the system used for a few years in the early 2000s.

"The thought of the committee is that once the top two seeds in the sub-sectional are separated, when it comes to the sectional the top two seeds would play for the sectional championship if seeds hold," he said.

Anderson also said the committee is prepared to make a recommendation to change the football bracketing process as well.

"We break the state into halves now, 1-16, and if any trip is more than 150 miles in the first round then we go to quadrants," he said. "The recommendation of the committee is to break each class into 16s and just leave it but in 7A and 8A, we'd go with a 1-32 seeding and leave it."

Classes 7A and 8A in football are traditionally made up of a majority of schools from the Chicago area.

Anderson said the committee will likely meet once more to finalize its recommendations prior to the April board meeting.