OUTSTANDING work from poster NIUAlum2002 and here is a separate recap of his work all in one story.
NIUAlum2002 IHSA District scheduling counter proposal
NIUAlum2002 IHSA District scheduling counter proposal
NIUAlum2002 District Scheduling proposal fix
- Thread starter EdgyTim
- Start date
I cannot like this enough. Great work and to me makes a lot of sense.
In these 4A districts, there are current 3A schools of PBL and Peotone with enrollments under 500 that are currently 3A that might be competing against Peoria Richwoods (1225 students, 5A). Thats just crazy, and why have it like that?
Public District #3 (8 Schools…Top 4 advance to IHSA Playoffs)-Plano-Sandwich-Coal City-Manteno-Wilmington-Reed-Custer-Peotone-Herscher
Public District #4 (8 Schools…Top 4 advance to IHSA Playoffs)-Mendota-Pontiac-Fairbury Prairie-Central-Paxton Buckley-Loda-Chillicothe Illinois Valley Central-Dunlap-Metamora-Morton
Public District #5 (8 Schools…Top 4 advance to IHSA Playoffs)-Peoria Notre Dame-Peoria Manual-Peoria-Peoria Richwoods-East Peoria-Bartonville Limestone-Canton-Clinton
Public District #3 (8 Schools…Top 4 advance to IHSA Playoffs)-Plano-Sandwich-Coal City-Manteno-Wilmington-Reed-Custer-Peotone-Herscher
Public District #4 (8 Schools…Top 4 advance to IHSA Playoffs)-Mendota-Pontiac-Fairbury Prairie-Central-Paxton Buckley-Loda-Chillicothe Illinois Valley Central-Dunlap-Metamora-Morton
Public District #5 (8 Schools…Top 4 advance to IHSA Playoffs)-Peoria Notre Dame-Peoria Manual-Peoria-Peoria Richwoods-East Peoria-Bartonville Limestone-Canton-Clinton
About a potential playoff game. Why stick a school of 1225 kids into 4A when the current 4A range is around 500-800?
No one is ever going to be happy with any of these realignments/changes...that's a given. Yet from what I see from NIUAlum2002 plan I see things at least making a lot more sense on a lot of different levels...
Great work! Definitely better than what has been previously proposed. Keeps rivalries somewhat intact and competitive balance in these districts are 100% better. If DHS2018 is against this then there is definitely something good about this proposal. DHS2018 complaining about a small school playing a big school is laughable as he routinely supports success factors, multipliers etc. for private schools. I definitely smell a hypocrite when the shoe is on the other foot. Keep it coming boys!
Just to get it out of the way now, but, DHS2018 is HHS/BBCHS reborn.
Carry on.
Carry on.
That proposal would have ZERO chance of passing because of what I mentioned, use that type of system and keep schools in their correct enrollment classification, then it looks much better.
I think you need to look at some of the current mismatched enrollments going on now at all the levels of classes from 8A down,lake forest Hs plays schools with 2000 more kids than they have for yrs,example!so from 500 or 600 to play a school with 1200 is a decent match.So as they say Cmon man!!!
No way. HHS never wrote posts containing more than 4 sentences.
Posted the quoted text below in the other thread about district fix suggestions:
"That was a lot of work you did, and I appreciate the effort. But, once you do something that big, people are gonna nitpick away. Here are my main nitpicks after just a brief scan of it:
1. You dropped down three 8A programs (Edwardsville, O'Fallon, and Belleville East) into 7A. While that solves the 8A district travel problem for those three schools (and the Joliet area 8A schools), that's a pretty big exception to the rule you just made there for the sake of convenience.
2. You bumped Boylan up to 7A. Why? Same convenient reason for dropping down those 8A programs?"
This part is new:
Basically, niualum is ignoring enrollment numbers so as to create districts that are not ridiculous in terms of geography. I'm not saying that is a hugely bad thing, because I have long believed that enrollment alone does not necessarily equate to competitive level. However, I do think that it opens his proposal up to criticism from those smaller schools that he bumped up a class or two into districts with schools that contain a majority of schools that are larger and from smaller schools that are in districts with a majority of smaller schools that contain schools that were dropped down a class.
"That was a lot of work you did, and I appreciate the effort. But, once you do something that big, people are gonna nitpick away. Here are my main nitpicks after just a brief scan of it:
1. You dropped down three 8A programs (Edwardsville, O'Fallon, and Belleville East) into 7A. While that solves the 8A district travel problem for those three schools (and the Joliet area 8A schools), that's a pretty big exception to the rule you just made there for the sake of convenience.
2. You bumped Boylan up to 7A. Why? Same convenient reason for dropping down those 8A programs?"
This part is new:
Basically, niualum is ignoring enrollment numbers so as to create districts that are not ridiculous in terms of geography. I'm not saying that is a hugely bad thing, because I have long believed that enrollment alone does not necessarily equate to competitive level. However, I do think that it opens his proposal up to criticism from those smaller schools that he bumped up a class or two into districts with schools that contain a majority of schools that are larger and from smaller schools that are in districts with a majority of smaller schools that contain schools that were dropped down a class.
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I am with you for a little bit here. what I hope they would eventually get to is:
after discovering which schools do not belong in 8a,7a,6a etc move them down into a proper class according to competitiveness only. and then district according to general area.
so in reality 8a would be the most competitive class, 7a and so on.
because right now we have garbage in garbage out. and from year to year we have schools that could walk through any class and playing not at competitive level field.
so, I think these next two years very key.
for gaining competitive classes. before districts are put into place.
Nitpick: Maine East is listed in both 7A (District 5) and 6A (District 4).
A specific example that highlights a general problem is the MSL schools. They were basically split into 8A and 6A. Prospect was the only East school in 8A since they are the largest East school. They aren't 8A by enrollment. If we are moving schools out of their enrollment, why not move Meadows up since they've been the best program? How would the changes through the years as program strength changes?
Is this heading towards a state wide promotion/relegation type system? Maybe you have caps based on enrollment and some other factors.
This is really thinking outside the box. It's more of a top down approach (IHSA choosing) to doing conferences rather than the current bottom up approach. Do we trust the IHSA not play favorites in doing this? Or maybe we stick with the current system and the IHSA just has to step in to solve a few of the major problems (such as pressure a handful of schools to play the DVC school).
A specific example that highlights a general problem is the MSL schools. They were basically split into 8A and 6A. Prospect was the only East school in 8A since they are the largest East school. They aren't 8A by enrollment. If we are moving schools out of their enrollment, why not move Meadows up since they've been the best program? How would the changes through the years as program strength changes?
Is this heading towards a state wide promotion/relegation type system? Maybe you have caps based on enrollment and some other factors.
This is really thinking outside the box. It's more of a top down approach (IHSA choosing) to doing conferences rather than the current bottom up approach. Do we trust the IHSA not play favorites in doing this? Or maybe we stick with the current system and the IHSA just has to step in to solve a few of the major problems (such as pressure a handful of schools to play the DVC school).
Thanks Edgy. Appreciate having the forum to be able to share these ideas!
Proposed 4A District 3 is current I-8 schools, four of which are 4A (Plano, Sandwich, Coal City, Manteno) and four 3A (R/C, Wilmington, Peotone, Herscher).
Proposed 4A District 4 has one 3A (Paxton-B-L 481), four 4A (Pontiac, Prairie Central, Chilicothe IVC, Mendota 555), and two 5A schools (Morton 923, Metamora 980), and a 6A (Dunlap 1304). Who did PBL piss off?
Proposed 4A District 5 has three 4A (Canton 700, Peoria Manuel 613, Clinton 581 ), two 5A (Bartonville Limestone 1009, East Peoria 983), and three 6A (Peoria 1357, Peoria Notre Dame 1280.4, Peoria Richwoods 1225).
Is football in the Kankakee area that much better than the Peoria area that 3A schools should be thrown in with 6A schools for the 4A playoffs?
Meanwhile, Paxton's 3A cohorts in the current SVC who have abandoned the I-8 in the last few years, Seneca, remains in 3A, and the Dwight coop gets dropped to 2A?
Think about it, a contiguous conference core for 3A could be Peotone, Wilmington, Herscher, R/C, Dwight coop, Seneca...they all boundary each other & were I-8...If you pushed CC & Manteno down to 3A, all 8 schools would line up...
Parts of NIU's theory works, some just crashes & burns. It is an interesting concept, though, in the idea of sliding some schools up & down and not having all the districts have 8 teams...
To be honest the 4A through 1A districts are not my area of expertise. I didn't exactly know what to do with Richwoods as well. I imagine there are people out there that know these areas better than I and could move those schools around accordingly.
Thanks Gene K! I'm sure others can make it better too which is why I posted it.
That's an alternative as well but it seemed to work better for most schools with travel considerations to do it this way in my opinion.
Agreed on the criticism part in that there is subjectivity in this proposal. One of the drawbacks of the current district proposal is the possibility of blowouts so I attempted to give every team as competitive of a district as I could.
I definitely think this is where they could take this after the first district rotation or two.
I figured there would be a mistake like that in there no matter how much I proofed it...lol. I know I had a tough time placing Glenbard South appropriately based on enrollment so maybe they could take that 6A spot somewhere and make a few adjustments?
These are all good points and this is why it would be great to have others from around the state chime in...that's not something I would necessarily be aware of since I'm more of a Chicagoland 8A-5A guy.
Thanks everyone for your input! Honestly many of you know your respective schools and conferences better than I do, but I think this idea of districts or some version of it is much better than what is currently on the table right now. Feel free to continue to take a look at it and see if you can make it better is my thought on the matter.
There are so many teams in this setup they would have a chance to win some games and other teams like main south would get some tougher competition!
Ugh...yeah that's a pretty big miss on my part. That came about because I knew I was keeping much of the SSC Red together in their own district but somehow I must have thought I had already listed them on there somewhere. When I finished I did think it was weird I finished with only 514 schools since there were 523 schools eligible for the postseason last year. I couldn't figure out why those numbers were so different...now I know why!
What most likely will happen is I will create a new district of those SSC Red teams and 2 others and put that district in 7A or 6A. That then creates a domino effect of me having to move down the smallest district in each class until I get to a point where I can create 4 ten team districts out of 5 current eight team districts thus making up for the fact that I added an extra district.
Basically it involves reworking an entire class which for me most likely would be maybe 4A, 3A or 2A which I'm not as familiar with anyways. Plus I also need to find room for 3 other schools to fill in 7A or 6A depending on where I put the new SSC Red district and to make up for listing Maine East twice.
For sure 8A and 1A would stay the same, 7A, 6A, 5A simply swap out a district for another one while also filling in 3 extra schools from a lower district, and then I need to pick which class 4A, 3A, or 2A to redraw in order to make sure I have 8 districts instead of 9 now that I created an extra district.
Thanks for the catch. It's a snag but I don't think it is a crippling one. I'll look at it when I have a little extra time and see the best way to create that extra district and rework the others.
love the work and think it is much better than many of the other posted altneratives. I think keeping CPS together is only viable solution to prevent competitive imbalance.
Only concern is with 2/3 of 8a teams making playoffs. Think you risk an irrelvant regular season. Woudl rather than 24 teams in 8A with first round byes for district champs.
Only concern is with 2/3 of 8a teams making playoffs. Think you risk an irrelvant regular season. Woudl rather than 24 teams in 8A with first round byes for district champs.
All.... If I understand correctly no multiplier or success tax. This plan is DOA. There is no way the publics would agree to end those discriminatory policies. They would be screaming to the high "heavens" 
an banging on the Ihsa's door to get those manipulative plans put back in.
Having said that though if something like this did manage to pass looking at the conference I follow (CS8) a non multiplied SHG would be with an enrollment of around 650 a mid to upper pack 4A team. Rochester for 2019 could go 5A in postseason play but unlikely. Their enrollment is set to drop somewhat in 2020. But it would be fun if both of those schools ended up in the same district playing 4A small ball and more importantly meeting up in the postseason. (much to the chagrin of Rocket fans) Ratsy
an banging on the Ihsa's door to get those manipulative plans put back in.Having said that though if something like this did manage to pass looking at the conference I follow (CS8) a non multiplied SHG would be with an enrollment of around 650 a mid to upper pack 4A team. Rochester for 2019 could go 5A in postseason play but unlikely. Their enrollment is set to drop somewhat in 2020. But it would be fun if both of those schools ended up in the same district playing 4A small ball and more importantly meeting up in the postseason. (much to the chagrin of Rocket fans) Ratsy
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HAHAHA! I am confident the Hilltoppers will be fine moving forward.. But as an alum, I appreciate your concern.
Effectively addressing all the trade-offs between enrollment, geography, competitiveness, and scheduling is an impossible task. And then one must add the consideration of process. The niualum2002 proposal introduces some enrollment flexibility in order to reduce travel times. It also seems to improve competitiveness compared to a system of rigid districting. A great deal of thought and work went into producing the proposal and the end result is a better product than rigidly produced districts. However, it is the product of one mind and includes a considerable amount of subjectivity (even though the guiding principles have been provided for the sake of transparency). Given the impossibility of addressing every trade-off to the satisfaction of every stakeholder, I believe the IHSA and its members will have a difficult time accepting a system such as this because of the amount of flexibility and subjectivity that is involved. Nevertheless, the proposal does a wonderful job of advancing the discussion by highlighting the various trade-offs and offering possible solutions in different areas. Well done!
exactly why would JCA care. they used to thump us 5 years ago. Very comparable enrollments
All.... If I understand correctly no multiplier or success tax. This plan is DOA. There is no way the publics would agree to end those discriminatory policies. They would be screaming to the high "heavens"
His proposal already bumps certain private schools up a class or two from their actual size, but he's just not calling the bumping a multiplier or success factor. Boylan is bumped up to 7A, despite being a school of 856 students that has failed to qualify for the playoffs (playing a regular season closed conference schedule against the same schools he has them districted with in his proposal) in two of the past four years. Rita and Mt Carmel are bumped up to 8A, even though they are both 7A multiplied schools currently. Immaculate Conception, a school of 321 actual students and 530 with the multiplier, he has bumped up to Class 5A. Bishop Mac, a similarly sized school to IC, is also bumped up to 5A in this proposal. Marian Central Catholic, a school that the IHSA has already multiplied up to 5A has been placed in 6A in his proposal.
The more I peel away from this onion, the stronger the smell when it comes to how private schools are classified.
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