Numbers on AAA/AA

[donboy6499]

Got bored at work and did something I always wanted to do and never really sat down to do, I tallied:

Total number of males 9-11 in PA in schools that offer wrestling, and delineated these by classification. A few things to keep in mind:

There are a handful of schools (top of my head, I believe it is Waynesburg, BeCa, and Warren, as well as most of the Pittsburgh City League, maybe one or two others) that voluntarily moves from AA to AAA or is involved in a Co-op (or both). The numbers for these schools are counted in AAA, though the tiny amount probably doesn't skew the data much. I counted only male enrollments of 9-11 from the PIAA site, and did not document schools in the spreadsheet.

Total Male students 9-11
AAA
139,973
AA
43,061

As of right now, we have 243 AAA schools and 227 AA schools.

The present cutoff for AA/AAA is 300 males 9-11. If instead of making about half the schools AA and half AAA, and instead wanted to make participants about available participants half and half, of the 470 schools particpating, we would have 119 AAA (the 119 biggest) schools and 351 AA schools. The cutoff would be 518 males 9-11.

These recent AAA powers would be AA enrollment in that scenario:

Franklin Regional
Kiski
Erie Cathedral Prep
BeCa (who already is AA and competes up)
Nazareth would be among the smallest AAA schools

In that format:

D10 would have 2 AAA schools
WPIAL would have 15 AAA schools
D6: 3 AAA schools
D4: 1 AAA School

These all just stood out at first glance. I'll look at it more later.

 

[El-Jefe]

That's fascinating.

If that were to happen (hypothetically b/c we know it never will):
- I'd expect Beca, Nazareth, and Erie Prep (at least) to remain AAA.
- Would Williamsport apply to go D6 in wrestling?
- WPIAL AAA could skip sectionals and go straight to regionals. Depends on how many schools would bump up to AAA voluntarily.
- Same for NW AAA Regionals -- no need for districts.
- Maybe AAA gets realigned into 4 regionals instead of 5.
- AA definitely would need to realign. Likely D6 would move from SW to NW. Or maybe they'd have to go to 5 regionals. Or both.

Or would the tiny schools cry uncle, and PIAA go to 3 classifications? There's already 6 in football, so it's not inconceivable.