New High School Football Districts Finalized; Northview Joins Jay In 1A

December 16, 2008

The FHSAA announced new football classifications Monday, with Northview and Jay remaining in the same classifications.

Due to declining enrollment, Pensacola’s Catholic High School  dropped into Northview’s District 1-2B. Besides Catholic, it will be another season of long road trips for Northview’s away district games. Other teams in District 1-2B of the Florida High School Athletic Association include Bozeman (Southport), Chipley, Marianna, South Walton (Santa Rosa Beach) and Walton (Defuniak Springs).

Class 2B includes schools with 522 to 1014 students. Northview had 544 students during the October week used by the FHSAA to determine the new classifications.

Jay remains in District 1-1A with Baker, Freeport, Holmes County (Bonifay), Sneads and Vernon. Class 1A is Florida’s smallest, with schools with 258 or less students.

Football fans in Pensacola will likely see a few more rivalries develop under the new classifications.  District 1-4A will include Crestview, Escambia, Milton, Pace, Pine Forest and Tate. Class 4A includes schools with 1,740 to 2,014 students.

The FHSAA staff prepared an eight-district plan for Classifications 6A through 3A as passed by the Board of Directors in November. But an FHSAA release said there was extensive travel within this plan so the FHSAA staff made a unanimous decision to change to the new 16-district format. If the eight district plan had been approved, several districts would have teams making multiple trips in a single football season from Jacksonville to Pensacola or Niceville.

Schools will have until noon on January 9, 2009, to submit written requests for reassignment to a different classification and/or district if they believe the change is warranted. Schools have the option of playing in its assigned classification or one classification higher. Schools in the lower 10% of the population breakdown of each classification have the option of playing down one classification if it is deemed more suitable for district travel reasons.

The final football district assignments will be made on January 16 of next year.

Comments

One Response to “New High School Football Districts Finalized; Northview Joins Jay In 1A”

  1. Richey Rich on December 31st, 2008 8:35 pm

    Looks like Catholic gets their way again, it seems the only way we will be rid of them is to just beat them. Baseball is coming up, and its time to put Catholic in its place, last place. We had them beat twice last year and gave it up late in the game, hopefully we have learned from the strategy miscues. Baseball is where we can beat Catholic, lets get this thorn out of our side. All hale the Chiefs.