Pretty much they're increasing the minimum requirement for all classifications, so now 2000 is the magic number for 6A cutting the total schools from 67 to 44 in 2016. Some notable schools that might drop down: Tucker, Newton (who beat central Gwinnett in the second round of the playoffs), Valdosta, Habersham Central (for all those region 7 folks, remember them), Lovejoy, Roswell and Milton. For all the 6A Gwinnett schools, everyone is safe except Dacula who has from the Gwinnett county school site 1938 students. Right now Milton is the cutting point with 2010 students and that might change. Moreover, if you are in the big 44 by 2016, you CAN'T go down. Apparently, schools can elect but I don't think they'll let every school that wants to go up go. Who knows, Dacula might end up being the cutting point. This is how I see the moving up process goes: it can only happen if you have 1900 or students, and they'll give more leniency to the south Georgia schools than the metro since as it stands there is only 4 region schools in the south Georgia region in 6A (region 1). So based on these assumptions Valdosta which has over 1900 students could move up but Lee County will stay in 5A since it has less than that. Read more...

CLICK HERE for the complete minutes from the GHSA Reclassification Committee Meeting

VALDOSTA - With just three days remain until teams can begin padded practices under the new Georgia High School Association guidelines, Valdosta took to the practice field Tuesday looking to get the players ready for the start of training camp on Saturday.

Practice began at 8:30 a.m. with players going through warmups before separating into the offensive and defensive groups to begin positional drills. This week of practice is crucial, especially for the defense, in physically and mentally preparing for the regular season.

"For us, the summer's huge," said Valdosta defensive coordinator Alan Rodemaker. "When the regulations come in - like it did this week from the state - on what we're allowed to do, we've actually got to do less. Not that all of it is taxing physically, but we tax them mentally during the summer.

"So, what we ask out of them is actually a little less when we start the requirements than it is during the summer. That's how we were able to play with eight new starters, and do virtually the same packages as we did last year with all those guys that had been three-year starters."

At Tuesday's practice, the defense - the secondary in particular - spent a lot of time installing the multiple packages the Wildcats like to implement, and learning the corresponding checks and coverages necessary to defend the diverse offenses that make up Region 1-AAAAAA. Read more...

Every spring, high school athletic departments are required to provide the Georgia High School Association with the number of students who participated in a sanctioned sport that school year. The GHSA has collected participation data since the 1987-88 school year, and it in turn submits the data to the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), the governing body under which most high school athletic programs participate.

The data is useful for all kinds of things. It helps the GHSA with forecasting possibly scenarios for realignment, the process by which schools are divided into regions within six classifications. It's also required under Title IX, the federal law passed in 1972 prohibiting sex discrimination in education, including high school and college athletics.

The data also gives local high school athletic directors the opportunity to gauge the health and progress of its overall athletic department and the sports within it.

"You can kind of see where your programs are going," North Forsyth athletic director Nathan Turner said. "You can evaluate it and see what programs are growing and what programs aren't growing. You can use that as a reflection tool of why is this program not sustaining and achieving? Or why is this program's numbers up? What are they doing?"

Here are a few interesting things from this past school year's data:

Lacrosse first became a GHSA-sanctioned sport in the 2000-01 school year. This past season, 6,830 players and 186 teams competed, according to the GHSA survey. That makes it the 12th-largest sport in the state out of 17 state-sanctioned sports.

But in Forsyth County, lacrosse is tied for the second-largest sport with track and field. That's right, the sport has leap-frogged traditionally popular sports like soccer, basketball and baseball. Case in point: Lambert had more players in its boys lacrosse program (82) than Forsyth Central did in football (80).

The sport's popularity in Forsyth County is, of course, a force of geography. The transplant-nature of metro Atlanta has brought lacrosse mercenaries from all over, particularly the north, and the county seems to be converting.

Speaking of track and field; it's tied for the second-largest sport in Forsyth County high schools with 504 athletes, which is consistent with the state of the sport in Georgia as a whole. Track and field is the second-largest sport in the state, behind only football, with 23,995 athletes this past season.

Perhaps that's notable only because the sport rarely registers with popular consciousness in the same way that mainstream sports like baseball, basketball, football and others do. It's not regularly featured on television, and only figures prominently every four years for the Olympics.

And yet, on the high school level, it's participation is as healthy as ever. Read more...