Christian Malone
VALDOSTA — Valdosta High can now move down to AAAA — if it wants to.
The Georgia High School Association released its classification numbers on Thursday, and based on enrollment numbers, Valdosta is a Class AAAA-sized school.
The GHSA listed Valdosta High School’s enrollment number as 1858.5 students. That would make the school the fourth-largest in AAAA. VHS has 57 students less than Shiloh, the smallest projected AAAAA school.
The school will now have to decide whether to move down to AAAA or petition the GHSA to stay in AAAAA.
Valdosta was the only local high school to experience a change in projected class. Lowndes High is the eighth-largest school in the state, with 2809 students, and will remain a AAAAA school. Berrien (840.5 students), Cook (823.5) and Brooks County (631.5) are still AA schools, while Lanier County (443), Clinch County (346) and Echols County (210) will still be Class A schools.
Valdosta’s decision on classification will have a big effect on Region 1-AAAAA. Lowndes, Colquitt County (2288), Tift County (1949) and Coffee (1947.5) will remain in Region 1, but the region will lose its three Warner Robins-based members (Northside, Warner Robins and Houston) once a new high school (Veterans High, which is projected to be a AAA school) opens in the fall. All three existing high schools in Warner Robins have been projected as having AAAA numbers. If Valdosta drops down to AAAA, Region 1-AAAAA would have just four schools left.
If Valdosta does move down, it would end up in a region (likely 1-AAAA) with Thomas County Central (1562), Bainbridge (1578) and Lee County (1735), and possibly central Georgia schools Jones County (1593.5), Harris County (1565), Columbus (1506), Upson-Lee (1435.5) and the three Warner Robins schools. That would be the most spread out region in the GHSA.
Region 1-AAAAA will also be waiting to see what the Savannah-area schools do. Only one school from the current Region 3-AAAAA is actually big enough to be a legitimate AAAAA school (Camden County is the seventh-largest high school in the state, with 2,876.5 students). But the public schools in the Savannah area — which have the size of AAA and AAAA schools — have long petitioned to play in AAAAA. If those schools continue to stay in AAAAA, Region 3 will remain much the same. But if they don’t, Camden could be forced to move to Region 1, creating many long trips for the school’s athletic teams.
The classification numbers were calculated by averaging enrollments at a school from the 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years.
The class assignments will not be finalized until later this month, when the GHSA will hear requests from schools that wish to play in higher classifications than the ones they are assigned to. The GHSA will assign teams to regions in December.
