Back in March of 2025, the Illinois High School Association Board of Directors voted to make three massive changes to help level out the athletic playing field across different classes. These rules went into effect for all sports this year.
“While the rules might not affect ETHS as much, considering the size and population of our school, other schools will be more greatly impacted,” said Christopher Livatino
One of the larger changes that has been made was actually reverting to the past fixed classification cutoffs, used from 1971 to 2007. What this does is puts schools with a limit on enrollment into a different class.This method, while quite simple, was met with much fanfare due to the success it had while being used in the past. And while the board said that they will evaluate the cutoffs annually to find any faults, they also stated that this change will bring more consistency in terms of competition.
The board also got rid of automatic waivers on the 1.65 multiplier for schools that are allowed to get students and athletes from more than one fixed boundary. This means that certain schools are allowed to recruit students from a broader area than just the town they live in. Prior to this rule being in place, these schools received a waiver that would automatically put them in the class based off of their school enrollment. Without this waiver, a private school with 1,000 kids got to stay in a lower class than a public school with 1,000 kids, because the public school would be forced to receive the 1.65 multiplier and therefore be in a higher class.
Schools are also not allowed to apply for a waiver if they had met the criteria of winning over the past 3 school terms.
Finally, the board made a slight adjustment to the Success Adjustment Policy. Instead of teams having to win two state titles in the two years in order to move up a class, teams now can move up if they win two titles, but in three years.
“The top class continues to get better and better due to this rule, but I know that our school is equipped for this challenge considering that we’ve been in this class for a long time … In my opinion, they should consider there being a public school division and private school division, so the same type of schools can be going at each other,” said Livatino
More often than not, it’s hard to embrace change. However, the tweaks to these rules are to cause excitement for fans to see their teams move up in the ranks, and face greater competition by teams of a similar strength. Hopefully, these changes will end up causing some stability and fans of all high school teams will agree that this was the right move.
