Several West Virginia high school sports will move to a four-class system as the WVSSAC board of directors approved the measure Wednesday evening in Parkersburg.
Four classifications will be used in football, volleyball, baseball, softball and cheerleading. Boys and girls basketball already used four classes, but will now be adjusted to be in line with the other sports.
The new classification system will take effect beginning with the 2024-25 school year.
The WVSSAC board of directors used a formula of three factors to determine a score that would dictate how schools would be classified. The factors are enrollment, which is weighted to 80% of the score, and location and economic, which were both weighted to 10%.
The location score was determined by two pieces. The first is the school county’s population divided by the driving distance between the school and the county seat. The second part is the distance from the school to the closest city with a population of 10,000 or more.
The economic score is determined by the z-score of the county’s median household income added to the z-score of the county’s poverty rate.
Locally, Morgantown, University and Preston High Schools have all been placed in Class AAAA. All three have played in the same classification for basketball.
Trinity Christian and Clay-Battelle have been placed in Class A. Trinity is falling down from Class AA in basketball. The Warriors were as high as Class AAA two years ago.
Morgantown High, which has the highest enrollment in the state, had the highest total score of any school at 94.6.
Bridgeport will move down to Class AAA and has the highest score in that class at 52.4. The highest score in Class AA is Philip Barbour (34.8) and the highest in Class A is Wirt County (23.6).
There will be 25 schools in Class AAAA, 30 in Class AAA, 29 in Class AA and 41 in Class A.
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