By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
It will be easier to win team state championships for many schools based on the North Carolina High School Athletic Association’s playoff format for the new eight-classification set-up.
Starting for the next school year, there will be 48-team brackets for Class 1-A through Class 7-A along with 24-team brackets for Class 8-A, which is limited to 32 schools.
With the new structure capping each classification at 64 schools, there already would be fewer schools competing for state championships in each class. While teams in most sports have had to win six games to capture a state championship, that will be reduced to five victories in most cases.
The format approved by its board of directors was shared by the NCHSAA with member schools last week.
“We were good with it,” Williams athletics director Bob Grant said. “You’ve got to start somewhere. I think this is going to be trial and error.”
Coaches and school administrators were assessing the set-up, often not sure how to interpret the impact.
“I don’t know what to think about it,” said BJ Condron, athletics director at Southeast Alamance. “We’ll see how it goes Year 1, and I’ll probably have a better critique.”
Graham athletics director Kyle Ward said the 48-team brackets were probably expected. That would leave only 11 teams out in Class 4-A, which is expected to have 59 schools.
The NCHAA pointed out that limiting each class to 32 teams wasn’t deemed large enough, but there wasn’t sentiment for all teams to qualify for state playoffs. The classifications will have fewer than 60 schools (except for 60 in Class 7-A) in the next school year.
Eastern Alamance athletics director Brad Costa said it’s good that a majority of teams will have playoff opportunities. A bonus, he said, is giving “many more teams an opportunity to host playoff games.”
Grant said the format seems like a best-case scenario at this point. Coaches and school administrators were mostly anxious to have direction regarding dates in putting together schedules for the 2025-26 school year.
“I think we were just as happy with an athletic calendar,” Grant said.
In conjunction with the playoff format, a postseason calendar was released. However, there was the caveat that changes with that are likely to arise as more championship venues will be needed with the additional classifications.
How teams will qualify for playoffs hasn’t been announced. That could come from an April board meeting.
Costa said there’s bound to be more reaction after it’s determined how automatic bids and at-large bids are assigned and how the seeding works.
Ward said a similar set-up to the formula currently used for multi-class conferences could be used, though he noted the potential complications with conferences with more than two classifications represented.
Under the current format with four classifications, playoff brackets for most team sports include 64 teams.
With 48 teams, that means at least 16 teams would receive first-round byes – and more that if there aren’t 48 teams on the bracket.
Already, there are questions for some sports.
“Who wants a bye?” one area coach asked.
In many sports, that could mean a delay of just a couple of days before beginning postseason competition, while for football that will mean a week off.
Yet with highest-seeded teams receiving byes, it means lower-seeded teams might have less-challenging first-round matchups.
“We can ensure that initial matchups are more competitive, addressing past concerns about ‘blowouts’ that detracted from the experience for athletes and schools; thereby reducing the likelihood of unbalanced games,” the NCHSAA memo read.
Yet to be announced are playoff structures for individual sports such as cross country, golf, swimming and diving, tennis, track and field, and wrestling.
Alamance County has schools that will be included in Class 1-A (Clover Garden, River Mill), Class 4-A (Cummings, Graham), Class 5-A (Eastern Alamance, Southeast Alamance, Western Alamance) and Class 6-A (Southern Alamance, Williams).
