Arizona’s new high school sports division placement process for the 2015-16 school year and beyond continued to take shape with Monday’s decision by the Arizona Interscholastic Association’s executive board to add more division in some sports.

In November, the board agreed to eliminate using just enrollment figures for division placement purposes. On Monday, it gave the OK for basketball, baseball and softball to go from four to five divisions and from one to two divisions in boys volleyball.  

The division proposal that was passed also will allow approximately 30 percent of teams in each division to participate in the playoffs and the AIA to use centralized locations to host playoff games for all sports. The AIA wants to use centralized locations to help it better manage state tournaments, including the state tournaments in the five new divisions, and control costs.

The centralized sites will likely host multiple Saturday first round events, the AIA’s associate executive director, Chuck Schmidt, said.

The 30 percent rule will replace the process that currently allows some divisions to send the same amount of teams to the playoffs despite having a different amount of teams in each division.

If the 30 percent rule was in place this year, only 14 instead of 16 of Division II’s 43 football teams would have earned a state seed. Between 12-16 football teams will be selected for the playoffs for each state tournament, beginning in 2015.

To keep with the four-week football playoff schedule, some teams will receive first round byes in the tournaments with 12 teams. For soccer, 24 teams instead of 16 would have earned playoff berths this season in Division II, which is home to the most soccer teams in the state, for boys and girls.

For girls volleyball, 20 teams instead of 16 would have participated in the D-II volleyball state tournament this year under the 30 percent rule. During Monday’s board meeting, the AIA also gave an update on the algorithm it is planning to use for division placement.

The AIA said that the algorithm will use enrollment, free and reduced lunch and the Maxpreps rankings history of teams in the past four seasons to decide in which division teams will be placed.

To view the AIA’s division/section/computer scheduling timeline go here. 

Gilbert Christian appeal denied

Gilbert Christian’s hardship appeal for one of its boys basketball players was denied by the board.

The school requested that its appeal be held behind closed doors. Schmidt informed the media of the board’s decisions after Gilbert Christian’s appeal hearing.

Schmidt also said that Gilbert Christian might have violated the prior contact recruiting bylaw in reference to two other basketball players on the team. The AIA is requesting more information from Gilbert Christian to determine if Gilbert Christian’s basketball program will be punished.

---The board denied Highland’s golf program’s request to reduce its probation for having a boys golfer practice at the state course after Oct. 25. The state event was held Nov. 1.

---Mountain Pointe requested more time to investigate the legal guardianship of one of its football players. The team forfeited the games the player played in this season.

The Mountain Pointe agenda item was tabled for Jan. 20.

---A new bylaw the AIA is crafting for a Legislative Council vote will propose a 50 and 150-mile radius rule for student athletes who transfer. According to the proposal, a student athlete will have to sit out for one school year if the school the student moved to is 50 miles within the school the student left.

The 150 mile rule will apply to students attending rural schools.   

---The hardship appeal by a current Horizon girls basketball player also was denied.