Lancaster Catholic’s state champion girls’ basketball team and the boys’ teams from Lancaster Mennonite and Linville Hill Christian will be moving up in classification next season thanks to the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association’s competition formula.
The PIAA announced the formula results for last winter-sports season Thursday. They apply to the coming two-year enrollment cycle, including the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years.
The formula involves Success Points based on performance in postseason play - teams receive two points for reaching the quarterfinals of the state tournament, three points for the semifinals and four for reaching a state final, win or lose.
Schools with six or more success points in the previous two-year cycle and at least one transfer on their roster for the coming season must move up a class.
The Lancaster Catholic girls, class 3A by enrollment, won the state championship in March, and reached the state semifinals in 2023. The Crusaders will play in 4A for the next two years.
The Lancaster Mennonite boys, who won the 2A state championship in 2023 and reached the quarterfinals in 2024, will move up to 3A.
Linville Hill, a class A state semifinalist the past two seasons, will move up to 2A.
Statewide, 17 schools are moving up in basketball, including 10-time and 2024 state boys’ champion Imhotep Charter (from 5A to 6A) and every other 2024 state boys’ champ (with the exception of Central York in 6A, because 6A schools have nowhere to move up to):
Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter (from 4A to 5A), Devon Prep (3A to 4A), Aliquippa (2A to 3A) and Imani Christian (which is voluntarily moving from A to 6A).
The girls’ teams affected, other than Lancaster Catholic: Greensburg Central Catholic (2A to 3A) and Westmont Hilltop (3A to 4A).
One wrestling program, Notre Dame Green Pond, is going from 2A to 3A.
Of the 17 schools affected, 12 are “non-boundary,’’ (private or charter) schools.
Schools may appeal, but only based on, “a mathematical error in the assignment of Success Points or asserted errors in the assignment of the number of transfers,’’ according to the PIAA web site.
The competition formula has existed since 2018, and has been tweaked or reassessed several times.
The transfer threshold was decreased to three in football and one in basketball in 2022. A year later, the formula was applied to all PIAA team sports, not just football and basketball.
Also in 2023, the PIAA board of directors proposed to remove the transfer portion of the formula; moving up or down would be entirely based on success points. The change passed first-reading and second-reading votes before being voted down on a third and final reading.
“That surprised me,’’ PIAA Executive Director Bob Lombardi admitted in January.
In March, the Board of Directors established a subcommittee to take a look, or a fresh look, at the array of issues related to transfers, alleged recruiting and competitive balance.
Lombardi said the subcommittee could consider how to handle, “transitory students, international students looking for an exchange (opportunity), possible new ways to classify, perhaps looking at the (success) points system itself.’’
