By Tyler Kennett, WV News
PARKERSBURG, W.Va — Football in West Virginia will officially expand from three classes to four beginning in the fall of 2024.
Alongside it, four other sports are affected: cheer, volleyball, baseball and softball. Basketball will remain a four-class sport as it has since 2020.
The WVSSAC Board of Control approved the move initially in April. Those recommendations were signed off on in July.
HOW CLASSIFICATIONS ARE DECIDED
The new classifications have been determined with a competitive balance formula that is like the one used for basketball.
Enrollment is the dominant factor — 80% of the overall score.
Following it, 20% is split between economic and location scores.
According to the WVSSAC rules and regulations handbook that denotes the guidelines upon which the basketball classification scores are founded, enrollment score is created by taking enrollment data and normalizing it onto a scale from 0-1.
Location score is made of two equally weighted pieces: a school county’s population divided by driving distance to the county seat and a second calculation that finds the distance from the school to the closest city with a population of 10,000 or more. It is then normalized on the 0-1 scale.
