Tucker Tigers might see new opponents

[JonInMiddleGA]

In 2006 that is.

Thursday, the Georgia High School Association released the proposed reclassification and region realignments that would take effect for the 2006-2008 school years.

Last season's (and this year's) ten team Region 6-AAAA is slated to become a 12 team region, subdivided 6 & 6.

Tucker would be in 6-AAAA(B), with archrival Marist, Lakeside-Dekalb, Mays, North Springs, and St.Pius X.

Sub-region (A) would have traditional powerhouse SW DeKalb, Cedar Grove, Columbia, Miller's Grove, Stone Mountain, and Washington-Atlanta.

Teams leaving 6-AAAA would include: North Forsyth (to 7-AAAAA), Forsyth Central (7-AAAAA), Etowah (5-AAAAA(B)), Alpharetta (6-AAAAA(B)), and Chamblee (5-AAA(B)).

The decision of how to handle games with teams in the opposite sub-region (play them & count them, play them but don't count in SR/R standings, don't play them) and how to handle selection of 4 teams from the region to advance to the state playoffs will be left to each individual region.

Last year's AAAA champion, Warner Robins, gets one of the toughest reassignments of all -- not only do they move up to AAAAA, but they are currently slotted for Region 1-AAAAA ... which includes defending state champ Lowndes County and traditional powerhouse Valdosta, as well as Coffee County, Colquitt County, Tift County, and fellow newcomer (and nearby rival) Houston County.

Since I'm posting this, I'll throw in a few non-Tucker items too
-- Local HS Monticello gets one of the biggest kisses of all the teams, dropping down from Class AA to Class A, in a sub-region without any football powers.
-- Their former region, 8-AA, has to be among the strangest geographical ones, with a group of 6 teams south of Athens down toward central Georgia, and a group of five near the GA/NC border. Perfect example of why play between sub-regions will not be required.
-- At least two regions will automatically send all their teams to the playoffs because there's only 4 football schools in the region:
1-AAAA (Americus-Sumter, Bainbridge, Lee County, and Thomas Co. Central)
5-A (Eagle's Landing C.A., Landmark Christian, Our Lady-Mercy, Whitefield Acad.)

[digamma]

I think Marist and Tucker were both slotted to move down to AAA, based on enrollment, but both decided to "play up" to the AAAA classification.

I love this new region.

SWD has been down the last couple of years, but for twenty years, they were THE program in DeKalb county--most prominent alumnus being Quitcy Carter. I'm not sure Tucker has played them (except for maybe in a jamboree) since the early 80s. That south half of the region is filled with neighborhood rivalries--Columbia-SWD, Stone Mountain-Miller Grove, Cedar Grove-Columbia and SWD.

Lakeside and Tucker maintain their rivalry, as do St. Pius and Marist (and of course Marist and Tucker). Mays is the two time defending AAAA state basketball champion (and beat Tucker in the state finals this year).

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

In 2006 that is.

Thursday, the Georgia High School Association released the proposed reclassification and region realignments that would take effect for the 2006-2008 school years.

Last season's (and this year's) ten team Region 6-AAAA is slated to become a 12 team region, subdivided 6 & 6.

Tucker would be in 6-AAAA(B), with archrival Marist, Lakeside-Dekalb, Mays, North Springs, and St.Pius X.

Sub-region (A) would have traditional powerhouse SW DeKalb, Cedar Grove, Columbia, Miller's Grove, Stone Mountain, and Washington-Atlanta.

Teams leaving 6-AAAA would include: North Forsyth (to 7-AAAAA), Forsyth Central (7-AAAAA), Etowah (5-AAAAA(B)), Alpharetta (6-AAAAA(B)), and Chamblee (5-AAA(B)).

The decision of how to handle games with teams in the opposite sub-region (play them & count them, play them but don't count in SR/R standings, don't play them) and how to handle selection of 4 teams from the region to advance to the state playoffs will be left to each individual region.

Last year's AAAA champion, Warner Robins, gets one of the toughest reassignments of all -- not only do they move up to AAAAA, but they are currently slotted for Region 1-AAAAA ... which includes defending state champ Lowndes County and traditional powerhouse Valdosta, as well as Coffee County, Colquitt County, Tift County, and fellow newcomer (and nearby rival) Houston County.

Since I'm posting this, I'll throw in a few non-Tucker items too
-- Local HS Monticello gets one of the biggest kisses of all the teams, dropping down from Class AA to Class A, in a sub-region without any football powers.
-- Their former region, 8-AA, has to be among the strangest geographical ones, with a group of 6 teams south of Athens down toward central Georgia, and a group of five near the GA/NC border. Perfect example of why play between sub-regions will not be required.
-- At least two regions will automatically send all their teams to the playoffs because there's only 4 football schools in the region:
1-AAAA (Americus-Sumter, Bainbridge, Lee County, and Thomas Co. Central)
5-A (Eagle's Landing C.A., Landmark Christian, Our Lady-Mercy, Whitefield Acad.)

Yup. I heard about this yesterday. It will be interesting to see how the Region's playoff representatives are determined. This could *really* suck for Lakeside, Mays and Pius if it is decided that two teams from each sub-region go to the playoffs. All three of them are usually playoff contenders, but will have little/no hope of playing with Marist and Tucker any time soon. The other interesting thing is going to be how many games get played against the other subregion, and who they'll be against. Washington is the only non-DeKalb County school in their subregion, and they've also been the best of that group lately. Our subregion is, for now at least, clearly the stronger of the two. Marist and Tucker could pretty much name a score in most seasons against Cedar Grove, Miller Grove, Columbia and Stone Mountain. SWD's last encounter with either of the Big Two ended in a 35-3 home loss to Marist. Only Washington, which eliminated Marist from the state playoffs last year, looks like a serious competitor over there. In recent seasons, Lakeside, Mays and Pius could all compete with SWD, and should probably beat the bottom four by at least a TD or so. The good thing about the realignment is that the traditional rivalries with Marist and Lakeside will continue.

OF NOTE: both Tucker and Marist were both slotted to be dropped down to AAA with this realignment. Tucker was the 2nd-smallest school in the entire state in AAAA this past season, and Marist has never been a AAAA-sized school. When the enrollment figures were released a few weeks ago, before doing anything, Tucker's AD (and head football coach) Bill Ballard called Marist AD Tommy Marshall. My understanding is that Ballard's end of the conversation went something like this:

"Hey Tommy, Bill Ballard. You doin' alright? Good, good. Hey listen, have you seen the new enrollment figures? Yeah? Well, are y'all playing up again? {pause} Alright, that's all I need to know. We'll play up, too."

And so, one of the best rivalries in Georgia continued...

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by digamma

I think Marist and Tucker were both slotted to move down to AAA, based on enrollment, but both decided to "play up" to the AAAA classification.

I love this new region.

SWD has been down the last couple of years, but for twenty years, they were THE program in DeKalb county--most prominent alumnus being Quitcy Carter. I'm not sure Tucker has played them (except for maybe in a jamboree) since the early 80s. That south half of the region is filled with neighborhood rivalries--Columbia-SWD, Stone Mountain-Miller Grove, Cedar Grove-Columbia and SWD.

Lakeside and Tucker maintain their rivalry, as do St. Pius and Marist (and of course Marist and Tucker). Mays is the two time defending AAAA state basketball champion (and beat Tucker in the state finals this year).

Heh. I hadn't even THOUGHT about basketball yet. Our sub-region is gonna be just riduculous inbasketball. Marist, Tucker, Mays and Lakeside have all been to the state finals in the last five years, if I recall correctly.

[JonInMiddleGA]

In the case of this region, I fully expect them to play across the other sub-region, perhaps leaving themselves 1 or 2 non-region games. I'd really like to see teams like Tucker, Marist, SW, play home-and-home with 1 of the south GA schools or with the new Clayon County'ish Region 4 through this cycle. I don't believe it's likely though, the risk when it comes to tiebreakers is too great for most teams.

But that region 8-AA, what a clustered up mess.

[JonInMiddleGA]

And the other half is similar for girls, with Pius & Mays winning state titles in 03 & 04, while Etowah won it all last year/earlier this year.

[Buzzbee]

Hey JIMG, any linky for the rest of us?

[JonInMiddleGA]

http://ghsa.net/doc_lib/Regions-Subr...%202006-08.pdf

[Buzzbee]

Thx.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

In the case of this region, I fully expect them to play across the other sub-region, perhaps leaving themselves 1 or 2 non-region games. I'd really like to see teams like Tucker, Marist, SW, play home-and-home with 1 of the south GA schools or with the new Clayon County'ish Region 4 through this cycle. I don't believe it's likely though, the risk when it comes to tiebreakers is too great for most teams.

But that region 8-AA, what a clustered up mess.

If Ballard fully had his way, we'd be playing an away game somewhere between Griffin and Cairo just about every season. It is *great* for our program and our kids (and it actually helps grow my ministry, too, believe it or not) to have a significant travel game during the regular season. However, Tucker is one of few schools that DeKalb County makes a significant profit from when we play in the county, so they've been pretty resistant to our efforts to travel. This past season, in order to get to travel to Americus, we had to agree to play a cupcake (Cedar Grove) at home as well, and that was with an 8-game region schedule. If this new alignment pushes us to nine Region games, I'm not sure how DeKalb County will react. The good news is that the new Region is far more DeKalb-heavy than the old one, so they'll be making more money off us than in the past to begin with.