Private school officials from across Alabama voted on Friday to name a new, multi-state athletic association.
The Alabama High School Athletic Association (AHSAA) and private schools have been in public conflict over postseason play and reclassification in recent months.
The AHSAA announced in January that it was restructuring postseason athletics by splitting public and private school postseason competition.
"The biggest takeaway from today was that for the first time ever the independent and private schools as a group collectively saw a potential path forward other than the High School Athletic Association. It's been a lot of talk about what could be. It's been a lot of talk maybe where private schools and independent schools should go, but today for the first time ever they saw what the options really are: a real association with drafted governance, structure, policies was kind of laid at their feet and they had an opportunity to say is this something that we're going to take seriously?" Justin Castanza, Montgomery Catholic Preparatory School president, told 1819 News on Friday after he attended the meeting of private schools in Montgomery. "The other most impressive part of today frankly was every single school, I think I can say with confidence, felt like the data that was used to create this system that was proposed included everybody. It took into account every school in the state, every situation, more than just numbers, more than just strength of schedule, and gave the best shot possible to every school, and it gave the information to make decisions for each individual school."
He continued, "The data that was used to create this system was very impressive. They presented that data today, particularly taking in the regions of the state, taking into account the types of schools that will be playing each other, the sizes of schools that will be playing each other, the amount of travel those teams will face, understanding that travel not only makes it hard on the teams, it also reduces the folks in the seats when it is time to play the games. The one thing I can tell you we didn't take away from today was any general consensus. There was not a vote, not a movement, not a motion to agree, disagree, or offer suggestions. It was: this is what is available, and please let us know if you're interested, and that was kind of how it was left."
Multiple media reports indicated the new league is named the Gulf States Independent Athletic Association.
"I think there's a chance that we'll see something that's less specific than Alabama, meaning if we create a league, create an association for private, independent schools, it might be in our best interests to think outside the state of Alabama purely. You could bring in the panhandle of Florida. You could bring in Columbus, Ga., a variety of schools along the line of Mississippi, particularly down on the coast, which could create a pathway into this association for our largest schools who right now might not right now face schedules and teams that are truly equitable in level of competition. I think those are all positive things as well," Castanza said. "I think the next steps would be for organizations to say, 'Yeah, this is something that we're going to consider.' The AISA schools are basically going to use this new organization as their sports association moving forward. Now, it would be up to AHSAA schools to see do we want to go join them. That would be the next step. I think there's three times that that would happen. Right now, a year from now after we see what happens in AHSAA for a year, or two years from now after we've been through a full competition cycle before what we would have previously have called reclassification."
He continued, "Now, you've got an association by member schools, for member schools in this sense. The small number of private, independent schools in the AHSAA does not allow for honest representation within the central board."
"An association like this would truly grant that, which is why that we remain hopeful that under the current setup at the AHSAA that we will see some of those protocols and procedures put into place where we might have a greater seat at the table, a better opportunity to govern, a better opportunity to advocate and see true results, and so the AHSAA has made some of those steps that they promised and now the question is how far are we going to go," Castanza said. "Are we really going to truly represent these schools and see changes in the structure that positively affect the schools that are represented within the new private league?"
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