FUTURE COMPETITION
New region alignments expected soon
The picture of what kind of competition that the Greyhounds will regularly face in the near future has become clearer.
Starting next year, the GHSA will reduce its largest classification from AAAAAAA to AAAAAA, meaning that all teams will be placed in one out of seven classifications for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons.
The next step in organizing teams into classifications was put forth last week with the GHSA released classification assignments based on enrollment numbers. As a result, Jones County has been assigned to the AAAA classification after previously being in AAAAA. With an enrollment of 1,564 students, JCHS ranks in the middle of the pack in its projected new classification, 34th out of 57 schools.
Schools had until this past Wednesday to appeal their enrollment totals or classification placement. That’s where schools can request to play up in a larger classification. Both are things that Greyhounds athletic director Chad Alligood says that JCHS won’t be pursuing.
“There’s really nothing to appeal unless you want to play up, and we definitely don’t want to play up. We want to play where the enrollment puts us,” Alligood said.
More key going forward for Jones County athletics is not so much the classification but the region in which it will be placed. The Greyhounds’ new region is expected to be set on Thursday of this week.
So what region could Jones County be a part of? In short, there are three scenarios – to continue playing against schools from Henry County or to go in two other different directions. That’s a result of this round of reclassifiation having scattered the Greyhounds’ current region and split it from a bulk of central Georgia. Teams assigned to AAAAA include Warner Robins, Northside, Veterans, Warner Robins and Union Grove. That leaves just three teams from Jones County’s current region – Ola, Dutchtown and Eagles Landing.
It removes some current region heavyweights, too. It would mean the exit of Union Grove, last year’s girls region basketball champion and top competitor to the Greyhounds in cross country. It would also spell the exit of Warner Robins, the region football champion of the last two years.
If the Greyhounds are not placed in a region with Henry County schools, Greyhounds fans would do well to prepare their future compass to point either south or west and put more miles on the road.
In the event that the AAAA classification does not add or lose any teams during appeals, it’ would leave three schools in southeast Georgia in need of teams to fill out a region – Ware County, Wayne County or New Hampstead. Toward the west near Columbus, Harris County, Troup County and Northside-Columbus are also in need of region foes. With Perry and Jones County being the lone middle Georgia teams, logic would raise the odds that both would have strong chances of being added to either region.
“Geographically looking at it, we could go southeast or to the west, but all of that depends on if schools play up,” Alligood said.
And if some of those schools from southeast Georgia opt to play up?
“It’d help them,” Alligood said. “With our geographic location, we could play anywhere. We could still wind up in a Henry County region, but I don’t see that happening because of there being so many other schools in the Atlanta area.”
As it stands now, the furthest trip to a region opponent for Jones County is 70 miles away at Dutchtown. By comparison, a southeast Georgia region would mean a one-way trip of anywhere from 150 to 170 miles to New Hampstead, Ware County or Wayne County. A region comprised of Northside Columbus, Harris County and Troup would mean one-way trips of anywhere from 100 to 110 miles each way.
That’d span beyond football, too. For sports such as volleyball or baseball, midweek games multiple times per season would come into play whereas football takes place once per week.
“Everyone wants to think about football, but what worries you as an athletic director is all of the other sports. In football, you’re on the road five times a year, six tops. But when you get into basketball, softball, volleyball and all of the other sports, you’re playing a lot more road games and have a lot more trips. That’s a lot of times out of school,” Alligood said. “It’s not really the amount of travel, but the time in school that you’ll miss. We’re here to educate first, and when you’re having to constantly get kids out of school before the day ends, a lot of things come into play. It’s not as easy as people think it is. If you have coaches teaching classes, you’ve got to cover their classes up or kids have to miss work. That’s when you get into worrying about a region being far away.”
