It wasn’t always smooth sailing for the committee that revamped the classification process for the IHSA’s non-boundaried schools.
The 15-member group — 10 from public schools, five from non-boundaried schools — met several times earlier this school year before delivering proposals for a revamped waiver of the IHSA’s enrollment multiplier and for a new success factor. The IHSA’s board of directors approved the new guidelines on Feb. 19 and they go into effect for the 2014-15 school year.
“The first couple meetings, we were kind of spinning our wheels,” committee member and St. Ignatius athletic director Jim Prunty said. “Then we all came together. It was a good experience working with everybody.”
The committee had two mandates: to determine whether a success factor was needed on top of the 1.65 enrollment multiplier and to evaluate the waiver system, which removes the multiplier for non-boundaried schools that don’t reach a certain threshold of success.
“Obviously we got stuck on football early on — no surprise,” Prunty said. “At some point, we put football off to the side and focused on other sports. That got things moving. [Then] we came back to football.”
The committee did recommend instituting a success factor that bumps up programs that are high achievers at the state level. Small- to mid-sized schools such as Montini are among those most affected; the Broncos will move up in football, wrestling, girls basketball and girls cross country next school year.
But other successful private-school programs — including Loyola football — won’t be affected because they’re already competing in the highest class thanks to their large enrollment and the multiplier.
“They have to go to the Big Ten, that was kind of the running joke,” Prunty said.
The multiplier waiver, meanwhile, was tweaked to shorten the proposed timeframe for evaluation from six years to four years and will reflect success at both the regional and sectional level.
“It’s a nice compromise,” Prunty said. “It’s a more accurate way of assessing the success of a program … I think the greater good is served by this.”
