WPIAL football likely down to 7 teams in 6A as PIAA releases 2022-23 parameters

By: Chris Harlan
Tuesday, November 2, 2021 | 2:53 PM

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The WPIAL’s largest football classification — 6A — is likely getting smaller again.

The PIAA released updated classification parameters Tuesday for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, and the numbers indicate the WPIAL will have only seven football teams in 6A next season. The PIAA parameters list the top and bottom enrollment figure for each classification.

For example, Class 6A football will include schools with 586 or more boys.

As a result, Baldwin would drop to Class 5A, according to numbers provided by the school. Baldwin reported 553 boys in grades 9-11, the range used by the PIAA. The Highlanders were the smallest WPIAL school competing in Class 6A football this season.

That leaves the WPIAL with seven football teams in 6A: North Allegheny, Seneca Valley, Canon-McMillan, Hempfield, Mt. Lebanon, Norwin and Central Catholic. That’s half as many teams as the WPIAL had in 2016, when the PIAA first expanded football to six classifications. There were 14 teams that year.

What that means for the future of the WPIAL’s largest classification is unclear.

“We’ve had sections that small, but having a classification that small is another conversation,” WPIAL executive director Amy Scheuneman said. “That would be something where we’d want to solicit feedback from a number of different people before we made that decision for them.”

Butler, a WPIAL Class 6A school, intends to continue playing football as an associate member in District 10.

However, there is a chance an eighth WPIAL teams joins 6A before next season. If Pine-Richland were to reach the WPIAL finals this season, the PIAA competitive-balance formula might force the Rams to 6A, depending upon how many transfers the team added in the past two years. Peters Township would face the same situation if the Indians reached the state finals.

There also is the possibility a WPIAL team will voluntarily “play up” to 6A. Teams must notify the PIAA by Dec. 2. But as it stands, the WPIAL will have seven teams in 6A.

For now, the PIAA has released only the classification parameters. Updated enrollment figures for individual schools won’t be released by the PIAA until at least December, after teams decide whether to “play up” or not.

The PIAA completes this realignment process every two years for all sports.

The WPIAL won’t start grouping teams into new sections or conferences until the PIAA completes its work. So, the WPIAL still has a couple of months to decide the future of Class 6A football.

“Everything will need to be looked at and addressed,” Scheuneman said.

The WPIAL could stay with basically the status quo. In a seven-team classification, each would play six conference games and three nonconference contests against WPIAL Class 5A opponents.

Or, might the WPIAL consider combining Class 6A and 5A into one big-school classification? However, that option has its drawbacks, too.

One issue would be a significant discrepancy in enrollment sizes. The largest WPIAL Class 6A school has more than twice as many boys as the smallest in 5A.

Would 6A and 5A combine for both the regular season and playoffs? If so, how would state playoff qualifiers be determined?

“What if you didn’t have a 6A team finish in the top two?” North Allegheny coach Art Walker said.

Walker prefers separate classifications and suggested looking outside of the WPIAL for a solution. He wondered if Class 6A teams from neighboring District 6 or 10 would want to compete with the WPIAL. Those districts have three Class 6A football teams apiece.

“Maybe that’s part of our nonconference schedule,” Walker said. “Maybe we play Erie McDowell or Erie High and Butler. Or there’s something with Altoona and State College, I don’t know. … I do think it’s a tough situation to be in, because I don’t know how many options the WPIAL really has.”

The PIAA calculates its class parameters by dividing its total number of teams into groups of equal size. Since football has six classifications, PIAA teams are divided into six equal groups.

Essentially, if a school grows in size, passes others in enrollment and joins Class 6A, a team elsewhere in the state is pushed down to 5A.

The state had 92 Class 6A football teams the past two seasons with the vast majority in Eastern Pennsylvania.

Of those, 32 were in District 1, which includes suburban Philadelphia schools. A dozen others were in District 12, which has Philadelphia public and Catholic League schools. Also, there were 12 in District 11, a seven-county region along the New Jersey border.

Harrisburg-area’s District 3 had 17 schools in Class 6A.

“The way the numbers are,” Walker said, “it doesn’t represent the WPIAL well in 6A.”

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.