Should Private Schools Be In a Separate Sports Division?

Cody Wilkins, Reporter

Sports are the highlight of most students’ high school life. Most students make it their main priority. Teams in high school all have one goal: to advance to state. However, they must advance past sectionals, regionals, and semi-state, facing single elimination as their challenge. For many public schools, their main opponents are teams from private schools, which most public school attendees find unfair.

Private schools are able to have “stacked” teams, or teams with an overwhelming amount of talented players, who can come from any town, not just from the town that they live in. However, public school’s have a limited enrollment, meaning only students who live within the borders of the town are able to attend. Because of this, coaches for public school teams must work with the players they have, while private schools can scout for players all around and offer scholarships for them to come play at their school.

Schools are placed in a division based on their school size. The sectional bracket is made for each division. Each year, there is a meeting where the brackets are randomly made for each school. Because many private schools in Northwest Indiana such as Andrean and Bishop Noll Institution are small in size, they are placed in a bracket along with the public schools in this area. Therefore, our teams must compete against the private schools in order to make it past sectionals and regionals.

During the regular season, many sports find it especially difficult to beat Andrean, a private Catholic high school with many athletes. Students who attend Andrean do so because of scholarships because of their athletic skills. The coaches use the talented players to work their way up to the state championship each year. However, students find it unfair to have to compete against a school that can scout for players. High schoolers believe that public schools and private schools should be in two separate divisions to create a fair opportunity for every school.

By separating the divisions, all public schools will have a fair chance at making it to state because they will be playing teams that are at the same level. The private schools also will be forced to face harder teams, rather than easily making it through every championship due to an obvious advantage