The last few years I've become accustomed to:
-Varsity
-JV - which is basically the sophomore squad
-Freshman A & B - pretty self explanatory
Looking at Palatine's Schedule online, this year I see:
-Varsity
-JV
-Frosh/Soph
-Freshman A & B
They're carving out one more level this year - I know the numbers are plentiful at Palatine, but we all know the discussions of numbers being down. Given that I'm surprised they've added another level.
What's your favorite team/conference doing this season?
For many of the 7A/8A schools, it used to be Varsity-Sophomore-Frosh A-Frosh B. Over time, "Sophomore" became "JV" to allow teams some more flexibility with rosters to have some "backup" juniors give their
sophomore team more depth. A similar change has been made at the freshmen level - "Frosh A" has become "Frosh/Soph" to allow some schools the flexibility to play some sophomores on their Frosh A team to give them more depth/numbers. My understanding is that this is pretty uniform across at least the CSL and MSL schools at this point.
Schools like Palatine, New Trier, Barrington, Maine South, etc. that have big numbers still play the four levels as:
- "Varsity" = varsity squad of juniors/seniors and talented underclassmen
- "JV" = sophomore-only squad (maybe a talented freshman plays here)
- "Frosh/Soph" = Freshman A team with only freshmen
- "Freshman" = Freshman B team with only freshmen
Schools like Wheeling, Niles North & West, Maine East, etc. will sometimes play some juniors on "JV" and play some sophomores on "Frosh/Soph." This naming/rule change has allowed for schools with lower numbers to be able to field teams (and maybe slightly more competitive teams) for all four of the levels that the conferences have always traditionally wanted to be scheduled. This has actually happened in multiple sports (girls basketball, baseball, and so on) to allow for that flexibility in creating full rosters and being able to schedule games on all levels. Again, the big schools with big numbers still roster the teams in the way that was traditionally done (Varsity-Sophomore-Frosh A/B), just with different names now.
Sidenote: The "Junior Varsity" games of old (that I remember from my playing days) - games played on Saturday mornings with the backup juniors/seniors on the varsity roster who did not play in the varsity game on Friday night - have greatly diminished in number or been eliminated altogether at many of these schools. So when you see "JV" at a CSL/MSL school, it usually means what I always thought of as the "sophomore team." Though there may still be a few of those Saturday morning games for varsity backups... they are still also, somewhat confusingly, called "JV" games (some sports, like girls basketball, differentiate these games on the schedule as "JV2" games and
sophomore games as "JV1" games, but I'm not aware of that naming convention being very widespread in football).