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By Michael Boytim
mboytim@altoonamirror.com
District 5 and District 6 include some of the smallest schools in Pennsylvania, and the way those schools will be reporting their numbers to the PIAA will change in the next cycle.
At Wednesday's PIAA meeting, a Dec. 1 deadline was set for co-ops for the next two-year cycle, which begins in the 2024-2025 school year. In addition, teams must inform the PIAA of their intent to voluntarily play up in classification, as Penn Cambria's girls basketball team did this past season when it won a District 6 Class 4A championship.
The change in reporting students comes from the elimination of a 10-percent rule that was in place for students who did not attend the traditional high-school format for the majority of the day.
"In addition to the vo-techs, it's the alternative, magnet, vo-tech, charter --all those subcategories," PIAA Associate Executive Director Melissa Mertz said.
"Previously, when public schools submitted their numbers, they would put their actual students there in the building all day, and then below that they would enter vo-tech kids, cyber charter, home school kids and we would only take 10 percent of those kids, add that back to their total enrollment, and that gave them their enrollment number.
"Now we have eliminated that 10 percent calculation, and it's going to be just straight numbers, one for one, and that will make things more clear and help us if we need to compare numbers being submitted to the department of ed."
Because it's more common that larger schools already include some of the extra opportunities kids at smaller schools need to leave the traditional school for, the change is expected to impact smaller schools more.
"We think where you'll see the change is in the smaller public schools," Mertz said. "They were the ones probably benefiting the most from that 10 percent, because they had a lot of kids going to vo-techs and so forth. I don't think you'll see as big of an effect on big schools. It will be more in the smaller public schools."
With the change to six classifications already shrinking the total of Class 1A schools, it will be interesting to see how many schools remain at 1A following this change once the PIAA receives all of the submissions.
NIL violation policy
The PIAA board passed a three-tier punishment level for violations of its NIL policy, which starts with a chance for the student to simply correct the violation by correcting it, perhaps by returning the item or items which caused the violation. Until that happens, the student would be ineligible from the date of the violation.
A second violation means the loss of athletic eligibility for one year with no reinstatement permitted, and the third is a permanent loss of the student's athletic eligibility.
The moment an NIL violation happens is when the student's punishment, thus ineligibility, would technically begin, even if it isn't discovered until later, which means a team playing an ineligible player could be subject to forfeit in certain cases.
To date, the state has not had any issues with NIL violations, according to PIAA Executive Director Robert Lombardi, who is the president-elect of the National Federation of High Schools and will begin his term there on July, 1, 2024 while remaining in his role with the PIAA.
"To date, I have not had any reported violations," Lombardi said. "This is more of a 'let's get in front of something before it happens.' We have seen other states do it, namely California, and it seems to have worked pretty well for them. I have not been made aware of anyone who has violated our NIL policy at this time."
Meeting notes
n Alex Mykut attended the meeting as he continues his work with the PIAA as an intern. The Huntingdon graduate is a grad student at Millersville and has played baseball there since 2019. He's 8-3 with a 3.90 ERA in 124.2 innings pitched and has 147 strikeouts in his career.
n The current plan is for PIAA girls wrestling finals to run together with the boys March 7-9, 2024, but that hasn't been made official yet.
n The following weights were unanimously recommended for junior high girls wrestling: 71, 77, 83, 89, 96, 103, 110, 117, 125, 135, 148, 165 and 200 pounds.
n Juniata Valley and Huntingdon have entered a co-op in high school girls soccer.
n Southern Fulton and Forbes Road have terminated their co-op in field hockey, but Forbes Road is entering into a new one with Southern Huntingdon.