With an 11-0 unanimous vote, the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association board of directors approved the 2022-23 Average Daily Membership numbers on Wednesday.
Sports such as basketball, cross country, volleyball and fastpitch softball classes that don’t have districts will use these ADM numbers. It will not affect football classifications.
One change moves Midwest City back to Class 6A. Bishop McGuinness is listed in Class 4A, but with the private school rule would play in Class 5A in most sports.
In the tentative ADM numbers, which were released in July, Piedmont and Midwest City were flipped, making Piedmont a Class 6A participant and Midwest City a 5A participant. But those numbers were updated on Aug. 2, switching the schools to their now respective classes.
ADM, which stands for average daily membership, is the measure of how many students each school has on a daily basis and is used for separating schools into different classifications for activity purposes.
The largest 32 schools in the ADM are classified into 6A, while 5A takes the next 32. Classes 4A, 3A, and 2A each take the next largest 64 teams, respectively. Class A takes the next largest 96 from there, while B takes all remaining schools.
In the new ADM, Midwest moves up to No. 32 in Class 6A. Piedmont is No. 33, the first school outside of 6A. McGuinness moved to No. 65, dropping it to 4A.
Schools had 72 hours before Wednesday’s meeting to object to the ADM numbers, but none were brought forth.
Here are more takeaways from Wednesday’s OSSAA board meeting:
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The volleyball state tournaments are moving from a two-day format to a three-day format, starting in the 2022 postseason. The three-day format replicates many of the other OSSAA sanctioned sports, as per the request of numerous coaches.
The main concerns, which were introduced during the advisory meeting last fall, were about how the two-day format pushed games late into the night, some even starting after 10.
“It’s really not conducive for athletes as far as rest,” OSSAA assistant director Wes Ruth told The Oklahoman. “(It’s) not conducive for safe travels as far as late driving and then you’re back early in the morning because you have to fit the rest of the games in as well.”
For 2022, the Class 3A and 4A state tournament quarterfinals will be Oct. 13 at Sapulpa and Sand Springs high schools. The semifinals and finals will be Oct. 14-15 at just Sapulpa.
The Class 5A and 6A state tournament quarterfinals will take place on Oct. 20 at Noble and Newcastle high schools. The semifinals and finals will be Oct. 21-22 at Noble.
Moving forward, the three-day format will be the standard with the classes switching between East and West sites each year. So, Classes 6A and 5A will move to the East side of the state in 2023, with Classes 4A and 3A moving to the West, and so forth.
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With the direction college athletics has gone with its leniency on its rules on transferring and name, image and likeness issues, the OSSAA board of directors recognized that the changes could eventually trickle down to high school athletics. The OSSAA briefly discussed what player-paid appearances in non-athletic events such as commercials could look like and the ability for a player to transfer to any school any year as long as it’s done in the summertime. However, nothing was finalized on either front.
“Our amateur rule is distinct in that you don’t violate it unless you’re compensated for participating in an activity that you’re participating with us,” OSSAA executive director David Jackson said during the meeting. “You can’t be compensated for playing golf, for instance. NIL as it’s explained to us is you’re not being compensated for participating, but name, image, and likeness.”
Jackson said there are other states that have already made changes to their amateur rule to address NIL for high school athletes. The OSSAA is in contact with Eccker Sports, a company that “provides tools high school coaches, administrators, student-athletes and their families can use to help them track the status of NIL in their state and understand the impact it will have on their students now and in the future,” according to its website.
“We had that group come visit our staff,” Jackson said of Eccker Sports, “and had a really good meeting and we’re still in the process of working with them. They took our amateur rule and are taking a look at that to see if anything needs to change with what we have in place right now with our amateur rule.”
The OSSAA board is looking to put a policy in place that would give guidance to schools, parents and players in regards to what’s acceptable for NIL appearances.
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The OSSAA approved to go forward with GoFan, a digital ticketing site the OSSAA partnered with in 2020, through the year 2026. The current plan was set to end at the end of 2023.
The partnership with GoFan is an attempt to replace the need for physical cash handling and ticket printing at high school contests. The OSSAA would like to be fully digital after 2023.
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