UHSAA declares their new alignment
The new UHSAA has declared their new alignment. This new alignment will be put into place at the beginning of the 2019 school year.
There is obviously a lot of problems with the new alignment. The sole rule for realignment is school size. The UHSAA needs to take other things into considerations when placing schools into different regions. Previously we wrote a piece on how schools that have major success should be placed in an “Open Division.” We heard some people complain that it would deplete other classifications from having top teams compete for state. It is understandable, but we are talking about competitive equity across the board.
The most absurd rule is to only allow 4 teams per region to make the playoffs. They end up playing random seeded teams from other regions. Region 4 has five teams this year that could possibly win state, but sadly one will miss out. Next year Region 4 will have six teams that could win state. Region 2 will have one team that will be good in basketball, maybe.
There are regions of 8 teams and other regions with 6 team. The new alignment is all over the place. We haven’t even talked about the teams that will have to leave their school at 11:00 am to get to a game.
The director of the UHSAA said that he received a record amount of emails but he passed them on to someone else. We don’t want to criticize the UHSAA too much but we want to offer up a solution. Not listening is not the solution.
We believe that every team should be seeded. There should only be two automatic bids per region and every other team should submit an at-large bid to get into the playoffs. There should be a person that oversees what teams are good enough to enter the playoffs. This is something that we propose with the new alignment. The UHSAA already has someone that oversees basketball.
Here is what kind of alignment we propose in the future. This proposal would mean every team make at least the play-in-game or 1 seeds could receive 1st round bye’s.
Region 1 | Region 2 | Region 3 | Region 4 |
Davis
Fremont Layton Northridge Syracuse Weber |
Bountiful
Corner Canyon East Jordan Kearns Olympus |
Bingham
Copper Hills Herriman Lone Peak Riverton Jordan |
American Fork
Pleasant Grove Skyridge Timpanogos Timpview Westlake |
Region 5 | Region 6 | Region 7 | Region 8 |
Farmington
Brighton Box Elder Highland Viewmont Woods Cross |
Murray
Hillcrest New Jordan H.S Skyline Cottonwood Park City |
Alta
Juan Diego Lehi Orem Mountain View Wasatch |
Maple Mountain
Payson Provo Salem Hills Spanish Fork Springville |
Region 9 | Region 10 | Region 11 | Region 12 |
Bonneville
Ben Lomond Ogden Bear River Stansbury Tooele |
Green Canyon
Morgan Logan Mountain Crest Ridgeline Sky View |
Canyon View
Cedar City Dixie Pine View |
Desert Hills
Snow Canyon Hurricane Crimson Cliffs |
Region 13
Carbon Emery Grand Richfield South Sevier San Juan |
Region 14
Uintah South Summit Grantsville Union North Summit Duchesne |
Region 15
Judge Memorial Summit Academy Layton Christian Providence Hall Rowland Hall Waterford |
Region 16
American Leadership Delta Juab North Sanpete Gunnison Manti |
Region 17
UMA Hill Air-Force RSL Academy APA West Valley APA Draper IMC USDB St. Joseph’s |
Region 18
Merit Academy Freedom Prep UMA Lehi American Heritage Rockwell Wasatch Academy Maeser Prep |
Region 19
Beaver Enterprise Kanab Millford Parowan North Sevier Panguitch |
|
Region 20
Green River Lake Powell Monument Valley Navajo Mountain Pinnacle Whitehorse |
Region 21
Bryce Valley Diamond Ranch Escalante Piute Valley Wayne Water Canyon |
Region 22
Dugway Elk Dale Milford Telos Tintic Wendover West Desert West Ridge |
Region 23
Manila Mount Vernon Rich Tabiona Way Point |
Teams with 4 teams in a region could play each other 3 times if voted on. The fact that this would create some great regions across the board rather than large schools that cant compete because they have a high dropout rate or a lack of participation . There are school that simply cannot compete with certain schools in their region for various reasons.
In the end we just want to see some reasonable changes made to re-alignment that makes sense. We want every team to have an opportunity. We want every player to play against their caliber of competition. We want to get ahead of the growth and not continue to fall behind when we are full of talented players across the state.
Please leave a comment and tell us what you think. We want to get the conversation going.
Next up is a petition for a shot clock.