AHSAA RECLASSIFICATION: Public, private programs separated, angering local school officials

By TIM GAYLE

The Alabama High School Athletic Association released their classification for 2026-28 fall sports on Friday, disposing of the 59 private schools in a pair of separate divisions for postseason play but encouraging them to continue playing public schools during the regular season.

The new classification system includes six public school divisions and two classifications for its private school members. It removed the 1.35 multiplier assessed to private school members since 1999 and removed the competitive balance factor added to private school teams since 2018.

“The landscape of education-based athletics in Alabama is changing, and the AHSAA must continue to adapt,” said AHSAA executive director Heath Harmon. “After careful review – and after listening to our public and private school members – the Central Board determined that now is an appropriate time to restructure championship play, resulting in restructured championships for public and private schools. This model will be implemented for the next two years.

“The Central Board has approved a championship alignment model that applies only to postseason play. Its purpose is to expand opportunity and strengthen the overall championship experience for student-athletes across Alabama. All championships will be played together at our championship venues.”

Catholic athletic director Daniel Veres feels that is a very short-sighted view of the problem by AHSAA officials who apparently never considered the opinions of private school administrators after delaying for six weeks their decision on a new classification system.

“I think this is more beneficial to us than playing in Class 6A (under the current Competitive Balance format) in football against schools that have 1,200 kids,” Veres said. “Other than that, the travel and the amount of money we’re going to have to spend, it’s $5,000 minimum for us to travel to Mobile. We’re just talking about the transportation to get there.

“I just don’t think this is the best for us. After six weeks, they (AHSAA officials) could have had more information. They probably could have spent some time engaging with members of the private schools instead of just thinking this is what everybody wanted. Getting rid of the multiplier means nothing in this scenario because every (private school) just goes down by a factor of 1.35. I’m glad Competitive Balance is gone, but if you’re going to put us all in the playoffs together, who cares about Competitive Balance?”

Alabama Christian head of school Josh Roberts said he was “furious” at the decision and called out the organization for its hypocrisy in a letter to his school’s parents.

“I think all of the schools are trying to figure out what it means,” Roberts said. “They’re looking at new areas, they’re looking at travel costs. They put all of the public schools in our area in eight-team regions, so seven of their games are already decided. My guess is that even if we wanted to schedule public schools, they wouldn’t have room on their schedules for us.”

With no public schools on a schedule and no postseason play with public schools allowed, what would be the purpose of remaining as an AHSAA member.

“I think that’s something that all private schools are evaluating,” Roberts said. “I have a lot of questions about revenue shares of ticket sales, revenue shares of sponsorships for postseason play. We do a very good job of advocating for and representing the AHSAA and I have some real questions, today, if they care at all about our school and other schools that are similarly situated.

“We’ve always had options as private schools. Evaluating different ways to play sports is not what makes me sad today. What makes me sad is that today is a very bad day for the state of Alabama. The decision that was made and the system that is in place guarantees that Alabama will have less NFL players than Georgia or Louisiana, forever; it guarantees that we will have less Olympians than Tennessee or North Carolina, forever. It’s short-sided, self-protection driven decision making that is not what’s best for our state and not what’s best for our teenagers.”  

The 2026-27 and 2027-28 classification breakdown for each classification is as follows:

Class 6A (32); Class 5A (64); Class 4A (66); Class 3A (66); Class 2A (65); Class 1A (69); Private Class Double A (17); and Private Class Single A (43).  

Region and area alignment was also released for volleyball, flag football, cross country and swimming and diving. Flag football will expand to four divisions -- 1A-4A, 5A and 6A in the public school division along with one private school division.

The new 5A classification in flag football includes Park Crossing, Julian, Stanhope Elmore, Wetumpka and Russell County in one area. In 1A-4A, Tallassee is in one region, while Billingsley, BTW Magnet, Brew Tech, Elmore County, Holtville, LAMP and Marbury are all in Region 4.

The private school division separates the 14 schools into four regions.

In volleyball, many of the best teams are private schools. In Class A Private, 42 schools include ACA, PCA, St. James, Montgomery Academy and Trinity all in Area 4. In Class AA Private, there are 17 schools, including Catholic, Glenwood, Lee-Scott and Houston Academy in Area 2.

And while the travel costs are higher in football, they will raise dramatically for the private schools in the non-revenue sports as well.

“We have to have some big-gate games,” Veres said. “Our fans aren’t driving down to Faith Academy to watch us play on a Friday night. We’re trying to grab the teams that are close to us for gate purposes. Even though MA is in a different division than us, they have 30 less kids than us. They’re very similar. So we would love to play MA, Trinity, St. James and ACA to fill out our last three (football) games because we need to have $9,000-$10,000 gates to offset the travel expenses when we travel to Baldwin County three times a year.

“Financially, this is not good for us and we haven’t even studied (the other sports). I would think the most likely scenario from this is the ones that think this is OK will stay and the ones that don’t will be reaching out to the Alabama Independent School Association or reaching out to form a coalition that possibly joins with the AISA.”

A Zoom call invitation was extended to all 59 private schools to discuss the new classification system on Tuesday.

“It was set up a couple of days ago so it was always going to be a discussion, whatever the outcome was,” Veres said. “This is not feasible for some of them. To be honest, I don’t know that I wouldn’t rather play in the AISA. We should make our own rules. We’re trying to schedule 100 percent private schools on our (2026 football) schedule. We don’t want to play the public schools. Let them have a game where they play somebody with 30 people on the other side and you have a $2,000 gate. The officials cost that much. We don’t want to go somewhere and bring 300-400 fans to give our money to someone where we’ve been told you can’t play with them in the end.”

Among the public school football divisions, the 32 members of Class 6A are virtually the same ones that currently compete in the 32-team Class 7A, while most of the current 6A teams are now in Class 5A, with Benjamin Russell, Park Crossing, Julian, Pike Road, Rehobeth, Russell County, Stanhope Elmore and Wetumpka now in the same region.

In 4A, many of the 5A and 4A teams joined together, with Region 4 now including Beauregard, Charles Henderson, Elmore County, Greenville, Holtville, Marbury, Tallassee and Valley.

“From a travel standpoint, I love it,” Tallassee coach L.A. O’Neal said. “It keeps us from having to go all the way up to Munford, Cleburne County and Talladega. Competition wise, it increases the competition. All of those schools were (formerly) 5A. We’re the only team that was 4A that’s still 4A in our region.”

O’Neal said the separation of public and private schools will not affect his scheduling in the future.

“I support what Dr. Harmon did, but from a competition thing, leaving it open for us to play in the regular season was a good move,” O’Neal said, “because we’re still going to play Montgomery Academy (in 2026). I just hate it for the private schools because their travel is two hours, two hours and 30 minutes sometimes, so that’s going to hurt them.”

There are no 3A football teams in the River Region and most of those who currently compete in 1A or 2A remain unchanged.  

Alabama Christian Academy coach Michael Summers took Friday’s news in stride, but offered up an opinion that resonates with a lot of high school football fans throughout the state.

“I think they addressed the third or fourth biggest problem in the AHSAA,” he said. “The biggest problems with the AHSAA is recruiting and transfers. And if we don’t want a climate like college football has right now, we need to do something about that. There are private schools that recruit and recruit heavily and have clusters of transfers move in … but there’s plenty of city schools that do the same thing and if you take care of that issue, I think you take care of the issue that most people have with the private schools.

“The multiplier was put into place because we pulled kids out of our district. There are schools everywhere that are pulling kids out of their districts now and they’re not private schools and nothing is being done to them. That was not addressed. I don’t know that anything as it pertains to representation was addressed. We have a separate private school championship division and we still only have one private school member (retired UMS-Wright coach Terry Curtis) on the board.

“A lot of it is semantics. They said we’re not going to have the multiplier, we’re not going to have Competitive Balance any more. What difference does that make now?”

Trinity coach Brian Seymore said he was disappointed at the decision but planned to schedule a mix of private and public schools for his four non-region games.  

“I was hoping to continue on two more years like we had it, with a public and private school mix,” Seymore said. “Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way and you’ve got to play the cards you’re dealt. It’s a good solid region with a lot of good teams.”

Class A Private Region 2 includes Alabama Christian, Fort Dale, Pike Liberal Arts, Prattville Christian, St. James, Montgomery Academy and Trinity.

Meanwhile, Catholic coach Aubrey Blackwell said the number of teams refusing to play the Knights this fall continues to climb. Class AA Private Region 1 includes Faith Academy, Glenwood School, Houston Academy, McGill-Toolen, Catholic, St. Michael’s, St. Paul’s and UMS-Wright.

“I’m already calling people in Mississippi (to schedule games) and I’m down at zero,” Blackwell said. “I’ve called everyone in this area. I don’t have the money in my budget to cover our travel that the AHSAA just gave us. We have to raise money just to run the program.

“It’s a big blow, so I’m trying to find, for my non-region games, local teams that will keep me from having to travel. But I’m excited about the league. It’s going to be very competitive and it’s well-coached football. But we’ve still got a 400-student difference with McGill. I liked the model where the regions were mixed (with public and private schools in the same regular-season region) so we can at least have a gate and travel won’t cost us everything.”

AHSAA New Classifications for 2026-27 and 2027-28 Football (River Region teams only)

Public Schools

Class 1A Region 4

Billingsley
Calhoun
Central-Hayneville
Georgiana
Maplesville
McKenzie
Red Level
Verbena

Class 4A Region 4

Beauregard
Charles Henderson
Elmore County
Greenville
Holtville
Marbury
Tallassee
Valley

Class 5A Region 2

Benjamin Russell
Park Crossing
P. Julian
Pike Road
Rehobeth
Russell County
Stanhope Elmore
Wetumpka

Class 6A Region 2

Auburn
G.W. Carver
Central-Phenix City
Dothan
Enterprise
JAG
Opelika
Smiths Station

Class 6A Region 3

Hewitt-Trussville
Hoover
Oak Mountain
Prattville
Spain Park.
Thompson
Tuscalossa County
Vestavia Hills

Private Schools

Class A

Region 2

Alabama Christian
Ft Dale Academy
Pike Liberal Arts
Prattville Christian
St. James
Montgomery Academy
Trinity

Region 3
Autauga Academy
Ellwood Christian
Holy Spirit
Pickens Academy
Donoho
Tuscaloosa Academy
Victory Christian

Class AA

Region 1

Faith Academy
Glenwood
Houston Academy
McGill-Toolen
Catholic
St. Michael
St. Paul’s
UMS-Wright

Region 2
American Christian
Briarwood Christian
John Carroll
Lee-Scott
Madison Academy
Randolph
St. John Paul II
Westminster Christian