News and notes from the OHSAA, and other pre-postseason tidbits

Happy Tuesday!

Believe it or not, one month from Wednesday, the 2023-24 high school sports season will come to an end. Barring postponements, the baseball and boys lacrosse state finals will be played June 8, the former at Canal Park in Akron and the latter at Historic Crew Stadium.

And once that passes, we head straight into a new era of the Ohio High School Athletic Association, that being the era of expanded tournament divisions.

Divisional alignments for fall sports were announced last Tuesday, just a few hours after this newsletter was sent to all of you. But no fear, here is everything you need to know, including every change for central Ohio teams.

If fall wasn’t enough, the winter alignments were released Monday afternoon.

Click on each story or the nuts and bolts of how these announcements affect central Ohio teams.

But in other OHSAA news, Executive Director Doug Ute spoke to the OHSAA Media Advisory Committee in a meeting Wednesday morning. I’m a member, and I made sure to take a few notes on the more important items …

• As noted in both of the above stories, a vote is ongoing among member schools to determine whether schools will be able to opt up to Division I in certain sports. If a school — let’s just New Albany and St. Charles in boys soccer because they were last year’s regional finalists — asks and receives permission to move up from Division II to Division I, two schools will not drop to II and replace them.

Additionally, Ute confirmed that schools cannot opt up to any division other than I, and schools of any size can make the request. So a Division V school cannot request permission to join Division IV, for example.

• We might see longer regular seasons, especially in the big-school divisions, because fewer teams will be in each division. Around here, tournaments will essentially start at the district semifinals for divisions I and II, giving those teams freedom to schedule regular-season games or even scrimmages later into October, February and May depending on the sport.

• Basketball state semifinals likely will take place the weekend before the state tournaments, rather than earlier that week as originally floated. The schedule for both the girls and boys tournaments probably will follow a “three games on Friday and four on Saturday” format.

Such an adjustment would limit long-distance travel for schools that have to drive multiple hours to suitable neutral sites.

• For volleyball, state semifinals probably will be played at Dayton-area high schools and the finalists will stick around to play the championship matches at nearby Wright State.

Other sports, such as baseball and softball, might follow the same format.

• Ute said the soccer tournament will probably be at Historic Crew Stadium rather than Lower.com Field, although no official announcement has been made. Lower could not guarantee the ability to host 10 finals over four days, especially considering that the Crew might still be alive in the Major League Soccer playoffs.

It appears the girls finals will be Friday and Saturday, November 8 and 9, with the boys games following Sunday and Monday. That Monday, of course, will be Veterans Day.

I imagine we’ll still see a football regional final at Historic Crew Stadium as well. It has hosted the Division I, Region 3 final each of the past two Novembers.

Incidentally, there will be a larger gap between the end of every fall sport other than football and football itself. The football calendar moved back a week because Thanksgiving falls on Nov. 28, the latest date possible, pushing the state finals to the first full weekend of December.

All of the other fall sports remain on the same schedule as last year, save the earlier state golf tournaments .

• No school has approached the OHSAA about resurrecting the NIL issue, as I reported several weeks back .

Now, on to the other news of the week:

Track and field: Track unofficially turns the page to the postseason this week, and I say unofficially because league meets officially count as regular season but are the start of the championship stretch.

Some league meets begin today. Others follow suit Wednesday and Thursday and wrap up Friday and Saturday.

Here is Frank DiRenna’s installment of storylines to watch as the regular season wraps up.

More track news was made over the weekend, when Dublin Coffman’s Kylie Feeney broke a record set by one of the greatest track athletes central Ohio has ever seen.

Potpourri: As we wind down the regular season in all spring sports, please enjoy some features we wrote last week.

- I chatted with Upper Arlington boys lacrosse player Tommy Janowicz , an Ohio State signee who probably could have played football at the next level had he chosen that route.

This story also ran on the front page of Monday’s Sports section.

- New Albany senior Ben Bilenko is seeking his fourth consecutive trip to the Division I state tournament. This would come in doubles, as did all of the previous three.

Sectionals begin Wednesday, weather permitting. The state tournament is May 23 and 24 in Wooster.

- Back to lacrosse, where Big Walnut senior goalie Caroline Weber will finish her high school career holding the state record for career saves. The only thing in dispute is the exact number.

- Frank previews the boys volleyball regional tournaments here . That began Monday night with opening-round wins for Big Walnut, Delaware, Independence and Pickerington Central and wraps up Memorial Day weekend at Wittenberg.

- Check out this week’s baseball and softball polls by clicking on the respective links.

Division II in baseball is the best for central Ohio in either poll. Jonathan Alder is ranked first, one spot and only three votes ahead of Watterson.

Football: With the recent news that 7-on-7 competition is now permitted for almost the entire offseason, Brad Bournival from our sister paper in Akron launched a four-part series Monday detailing how all of this came about.

Here is part 1, and here is part 2 from this morning, detailing the potential effect on spring sports.

In case you missed it, I caught up with several area teams at a 7-on-7 last week at Hartley.

Athlete of the week: Our poll for this week’s Athlete of the Week is open through 4 p.m. Friday. We have six nominees this week.

Nominations are accepted through noon Monday for events of the previous week. Learn how to nominate an athlete here .

Our most recent winner is Hilliard Davidson player Mitchell Davis . The senior batted .600 in four games, including crucial performances against two of the Wildcats’ rivals.

That’s it for this week.

If you like what you see, continue to subscribe to the Dispatch. Tell a friend to check us out, too. Your support is incredibly important to us, and we thank you for it.

See you next week!

Dave Purpura, sports reporter

dpurpura@dispatch.com

@dp_dispatch

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: News and notes from the OHSAA, and other pre-postseason tidbits