PIAA tweaks competitive balance rule to make bumps in class slightly less likely

By: Chris Harlan
Wednesday, December 4, 2024 | 8:28 PM

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Only teams that reach the state finals will be affected by the PIAA competitive-balance rule following a change approved Wednesday.

The revision comes a year late for the Greensburg Central Catholic girls basketball team, which was forced to move up to Class 3A this winter without reaching the state finals. But the PIAA board voted to prevent similar situations from occurring in the future.

“We’ve seen teams go to the championship game, and somebody else goes to two semis,” PIAA executive director Bob Lombardi said. “The team that went to two semis goes up. The team that went to the championship didn’t.

“That didn’t sit well.”

The PIAA competitive-balance rule was intended to prevent championship teams from reloading with transfers. It targets teams that had success in the state playoffs and added too many transfers in a two-year span. If both thresholds are met, that team is forced into a higher classification to play against schools with a larger enrollment.

The PIAA board on Wednesday considered a list of revisions to the rule with some tabled for later. The only significant change adopted was increasing the number of success points needed for promotion from six to seven.

Under the Competition Formula, a team that reaches the finals receives four success points and a semifinalist gets three. The rule change will affect promotions in the next two-year cycle, starting in 2026-27.

However, more changes likely are ahead.

The rule has undergone many alterations since its adoption in 2018 for football and basketball. In the past two years, the rule was expanded to include all team sports.

Lombardi said the rule likely will keep evolving.

“The board did a good job researching and looking at how to make this better,” he said. “Heck, we’re only in our sixth year. Our transfer rule has been around, what, probably 80 or 90 years? There’s not a state in the country that has that one right yet.”

The board on Wednesday passed on a first reading a plan to increase the number of transfers required to trigger the rule. The new thresholds would be five or more in football and lacrosse, four or more in baseball and softball, three or more in field hockey, soccer, tennis, volleyball and wrestling and two or more in basketball.

To establish those thresholds, the PIAA divided in half the number of players needed to start a contest and rounded down. Currently, the threshold for football is three and basketball is one.

“The board liked that philosophy because it was consistent sport to sport,” Lombardi said.

PIAA rule changes must pass three votes.

The board also tentatively tasked the PIAA staff and its attorneys with writing language to address health and safety, which has been a key element of ongoing litigation filed by Aliquippa. Lombardi said the board wanted to consider sport-specific situations regarding the competitive-balance rule.

“Boys and girls lacrosse are different. Football is different. Basketball is different,” Lombardi said. “We need to have something to look at health and safety provisions that applies to all sports.”

In the past, the Competition Formula has counted all transfers regardless of why the student switched schools. But the board will consider a proposal not to count some transfers caused by exceptional circumstances.

“We had situations in appeal hearings that caught some people’s attention,” Lombardi said. “A family moved because their house burned down. That’s tough to count them as a transfer.”

If approved, the policy would say: “A transfer which has occurred due to a change of family living circumstances that was necessitated by exceptional and unusual circumstances beyond the reasonable control of the student or the student’s family will be considered with supporting documentation.”

All other transfer rules would still apply.

Chris Harlan is a TribLive reporter covering sports. He joined the Trib in 2009 after seven years as a reporter at the Beaver County Times. He can be reached at charlan@triblive.com.

Tags: Aliquippa