Righting the Competitive Imbalance in Athletics

Educators and state association leaders push measures to lessen the widening socioeconomic impact on game outcomes

The football team at Perry High School in Iowa hit a high point last fall. In its sixth year of winless seasons, often blowouts, the Bluejays came out victorious at September’s homecoming game, winning 27-21 in overtime. The immediate feeling was electric, Perry Community School District Superintendent Clark Wicks remembers, as fans stormed the playing field.

But the celebration was short-lived. In October, the school announced the team would forfeit the rest of the season. Too many players on the already-small squad were injured. It wasn’t safe to put the Bluejays up against more competitive teams in the conference.

“It was devastating,” Wicks admits.

Some might chalk up the years-long string of losses and the injury-depleted roster to bad luck, perhaps creating an opportunity to regroup and return stronger next season. But Wicks and a growing number of superintendents, athletics directors and state sports association leaders across the country see something else at play: dramatically shifting demographics and a widening gulch between the haves and have-nots in interscholastic sports.

In Wicks’ small-city district, located 25 miles from Des Moines, about 65 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch and 50 percent are English language learners. Many can’t try out for sports teams because they are too busy working after school to support their families or caring for younger siblings.

“You take the old ‘Hoosiers’ movie — that magical run for an entire school community,” says John Becker, president-elect of the California Interscholastic Federation and superintendent of the Roseville Joint Union High School District in California, where teams from private schools often dominate state championships. “I think that’s lost now because most of our schools will never get that opportunity.”

Socioeconomic Shifts

Concerns over unfair competition in interscholastic sports play is not a new conundrum. For decades, public school teams have grumbled about the upper hand that some independent schools have, including more financial resources for athletics and the ability to draw students from a wider region.

Today those conversations are growing more complex. The number of high school students in high-poverty public schools where at least 75 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch has grown from 3 percent in 2000 to 17 percent in 2020, according to the National Equity Atlas. Funding gaps between well-supported schools and poor schools are widening at the same time, according to the detailed report card on racial and economic equity developed by PolicyLink and the USC Equity Research Institute.

These socioeconomic shifts are triggering community discussions about ways to level the uneven playing field among competitors in interscholastic athletics, including amending how school sports teams are classified for conference or tournament competition. Proposed and already-adopted formulas consider everything from the enrollment history of individual players to team members’ free or reduced-price lunch status.

“Whenever we meet and the executive directors get into a room … one of the first things that people talk about is, what are you doing in your state? How are we handling classification that considers the type of school and population in a school?” says Karissa Niehoff, CEO of the National Federation of State High School Associations, which governs the playing rules in high school sports. “It is not easy. It’s an issue that is at the heart and soul of every single state association — making a level playing field when arguably there is no such thing.”

Uneven Resources

Classification of school teams for placement in athletic conferences or end-of-season tournaments has historically considered a school’s enrollment numbers or location. But students in better-financed public or wealthy private schools bring plenty of advantages that can make it difficult for those with much less to compete against them on soccer fields, basketball courts or baseball diamonds. That ability gap begins in grade school when well-resourced students start climbing the ranks of competitive club programs, entering 9th grade with years of experience and coaching in a sport.

At better-financed schools, the coaches tend to be well-trained and the playing fields and gymnasiums well-maintained. These high schools are more likely to have athletic trainers on staff who can guide players on ways to prevent injuries or quickly return to competition after injury, according to Kathy Dieringer, president of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association.

Niehoff, who coached a state championship field hockey team in Litchfield, Conn., before moving into school and athletics administration, says, “It’s very obvious that some schools are highly resourced, and those kids get the finest equipment, pay their coaches a lot, send the kids to camps.”

Without level competition, the system perpetuates itself for less-resourced schools — more losses mean fewer kids try out for teams, game-day ticket sales drop and athletics programs lose more resources. “Kids are not attracted to a setting where you lose 50 or 60 to nothing,” says Wicks, whose varsity football team at Perry High School had lost 41 straight games before its homecoming game victory last fall.

Those uneven matchups cascade into uneven outcomes. When Sean Mackin, director of athletics for Chicopee Public Schools in Massachusetts, talks about the inequities, he focuses on the data. In a presentation last year to the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, he noted that 82 percent of the state’s recent champions and tournament finalists in 11 boys’ and girls’ varsity sports were from schools with fewer higher-needs students and a more stable student body than the remaining 18 percent.

“High school athletics in Massachusetts are not the great equalizer, according to this data,” Mackin wrote in the report. “This data tells schools with higher high-needs [percentages] that their students need to limit their expectations and to not aspire to athletic success.”

In September, the MIAA approved a competitive equity modifier for divisional alignment, which goes into effect this fall. The modifier will consider two things: the school’s high-needs percentage and the stability rate percentage. The high-needs percentage includes students who are economically disadvantaged, current or former English language learners and those in special education. The stability rate measures the number of students who regularly move in and out of a school and therefore would be unlikely to have much of an impact on interscholastic athletics and other extracurriculars.

“I was a basketball coach and a basketball player, and I would do stats all the time,” Mackin says. “The numbers tell the story. And then you’ve got to dig a little bit deeper and see what’s going on there. If state associations do that, then good things happen.”

Leveling Strategies

Soon after the abrupt end to the Perry High School Bluejays’ football season, Wicks, as superintendent of the 1,800-student district, sought solutions from the Iowa High School Athletic Association for what he hoped would bring some competitive fairness for his football players — taking into account free and reduced-price lunch rates at a school for classification purposes or creating a non-playoff district, for example.

In December, the 365-member association voted overwhelmingly to approve a recommendation to consider socioeconomic factors in football classifications. Subsequently, the Iowa state board of education adopted the plan, which reduces 40 percent of a school’s free and reduced price lunch count from its annual enrollment to determine how the team would be classified for play in football. The plan takes effect this fall.

In 2022, South Dakota High School Activities Association members also approved a plan to classify schools based on the federal government’s school lunch eligibility numbers. So did the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association in 2019. The Minnesota State High School League uses a similar approach in classifying high school teams.

Elsewhere, state athletic associations, whose oversight of school sports can vary widely state by state, are considering and approving other measures to address competitiveness gaps. The Indiana High School Athletic Association reclassifies team sports based on their postseason success. California has an open division where powerhouses compete in state championship playoffs. Amid concerns that private schools were winning a higher percentage of state championships, the Ohio High School Athletic Association, after multiple attempts, instituted a competitive balance plan for some sports in 2014. With competitive balance in effect, the number of championships won by non-public schools, which comprise 16 percent of the association’s membership, dropped from 44 percent to 32 percent.

The process in Ohio, which applies to eight team sports, starts with a high school’s total enrollment and then factors in the backgrounds of the students on the roster. For public schools, the formula considers whether a student and at least one parent resides within the school district. Ohio is an open enrollment state, meaning public school students can attend schools outside their district. For non-public schools, it considers whether a student has been “continuously enrolled” in private school since 7th grade.

“We went into it with kind of the mindset of both our staff and our committee of not really wanting to separate the tournaments” between public and private, says Bob Goldring, director of communications and special projects with the Ohio High School Athletic Association. “We felt that a lot of times, this is more of an adult issue than it is with the kids. And if we asked the students, they would prefer to play the best in order to be considered the best.”

New Jersey and Tennessee, however, hold separate end-of-season tournaments for public schools and private schools. The Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association made the change in 2018 after more than a decade of discussion. Recently, a public high school asked the association to consider socioeconomic factors as it classifies schools. The school’s demographics had changed dramatically, now including many kids who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch and don’t play interscholastic sports.

“That’s something we’ll be taking a look at over the next couple of years,” says Mark Reeves, executive director of the Tennessee association. “That would be a drastic change for the association, but we’ve been charged, at least, to gather information. They did such a great job presenting. They really piqued the interest of our board.”

While many state associations have adopted grouping changes or are contemplating them, not every group is debating competitive balance to this extent. Julia Zachary, communications coordinator of the University Interscholastic League in Texas, says “competitiveness and economic factors are not considered when creating new alignments. … Schools are placed in a conference by enrollment and a district by geography. Alternative classification strategies are not currently under consideration.”

Generating Hope

As school districts and athletic associations grapple with changing demographics and competitive abilities, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Yet Vincent Minjares, project manager of the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program, says it’s the duty of school sports leaders to find an appropriate path for competition moving forward.

“One of the things we love about play is the uncertain nature of the outcome when we engage in a contest,” Minjares says. “So when I play against some other opponent, whether it be another team or another individual, I want to go into that game knowing that I have a chance. Governing bodies have a responsibility to create conditions for that to happen.”

Amid the hoopla that surrounds school-based sports, it’s important to remember their purpose: to educate students. Even without systemic changes, education leaders still can find ways to ensure less-resourced teams have a chance to succeed. They can schedule pre-season games against high schools with similar demographics, for example. In Chicopee, Mass., Mackin will be offering a free summer camp to improve up to 280 student-athletes’ academic, citizenship and sports skills. He offered a pilot version of the camp to about 20 students last summer.

In Iowa, Wicks, the superintendent in Perry, is determined to put in place changes that he believes will give the football players at Perry High School something they deserve: hope.

“If you walk in the shoes of not winning for five to six years, that is devastating,” Wicks says. “We need to create this level high school playing field and give that fair opportunity for high school student-athletes to drive for football success and know that teams can experience just good competition and just an opportunity to have hope.”

Sarah Hall is a freelance writer in Raleigh, N.C.