JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Open division is now a reality in high school sports, ushered in by a unanimous vote by the Florida High School Athletic Association’s board of directors on Tuesday morning.
The new Open division will take the top eight teams in flag football, football, basketball, volleyball, lacrosse, soccer, baseball, and softball and put them in their own division for the state playoffs. The seeds will be determined by MaxPreps rankings points (not the modified and confusing FHSAA variation) after the end of the regular season in football, and after the district tournaments in all other sports.
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The quest is to create the best of the best in a postseason bracket, and at the same time, thin out some of the all-star teams that have dominated in regular state series competition for years.
FHSAA executive director Craig Damon has been a driving force behind the Open division for several years. He said it’s a way to allow schools that have had little to no chance at competing for a state title due to the roadblock of super teams, along with the ability to crown a true, undisputed state champion.
“A little bit of both. Every year, the final [playoff] rankings come out, there’s always that argument of who’s the best team in the state,” Damon said. “This way, they can settle it on the field. Also, for the teams that aren’t [at the level] like the elite teams they run into, the St. Thomas or Chaminades, you made it that far, now some of those schools may have that opportunity [for a title].”
How it looks
In football, here’s how the Open division would have looked using the FHSAA rankings had it been in place for 2025:
1. DeLand; 2. Cardinal Mooney; 3. Vero Beach; 4. Gainesville Buchholz; 5. Miami Northwestern; 6. Mandarin; 7. Carrollwood Day; 8. Bolles.
Since the FHSAA is now using just the straight MaxPreps rankings for football (and not the FHSAA-modfied MaxPreps rankings it has used), teams like St. Thomas Aquinas and Chaminade-Madonna would have been in the Open division had that criteria been in place last year.
The teams that don’t reach the top eight and qualify for the Open division will remain in their respective classifications. Pool A would contain seed Nos. 1, 4, 5 and 8, while Pool B would consist of seed Nos. 2, 3, 6, and 7. First-round games would be played at the lower seed, but the higher seed would receive the gate money. The round-robin format would ensure teams had at least one home playoff game.
The round-robin format would follow the traditional playoff format (regional quarterfinals, semifinals, and championship). The title games in all sports other than football would be double elimination.
In Pool A, games would be scheduled like this: No. 5 at No. 1; No. 8 at No. 4; No. 1 at No. 8; No. 5 at No. 4; No. 4 at No. 1 and No. 8 at No. 5. In Pool B, the round-robin schedule would be: No. 6 at No. 2; No. 7 at No. 3; No. 2 at No. 7; No. 6 at No. 3; No. 3 at No. 2 and No. 7 at No. 6. The top teams after round-robin play move on to the state semifinals.
Tiebreaking procedures would be head-to-head results, points allowed by tied teams, point differential among tied teams, and overall point differential from all games. Damon said that he didn’t want teams that made the Open division playoffs to be penalized for not having games. Round-robin play guarantees Open teams at least three playoff games. Teams will not be allowed to opt out, which was a proposal last year.
Will it work without oversight?
On the surface, it is a step in the right direction. On paper, it may have some growing pains. In football, teams like Chaminade-Madonna (15th) and St. Thomas Aquinas (17th), perennial powers who have monopolized championship games, wouldn’t have made the Open division playoffs using the FHSAA rankings last year. There was quite a bit of variation between the FHSAA’s modified MaxPreps rankings and the ones available on the MaxPreps website.
Aquinas has 12 state championships since 2010, including the last seven straight. Chaminade-Madonna made 10 consecutive championship games, winning eight titles.
“We’ll see how it goes initially with the rankings,” Damon said. “If not, we can tweak it.”
Votes on new bills pass
The board also voted 8-2 to amend the bylaws to accommodate recent bills that were signed into state law by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Senate Bill 538 and Senate Bill 178 will become law on July 1. SB 538 details new regulations on nontraditional students like virtual and home schoolers who won’t be able to bounce from school to school (and sport to sport) during the school year.
Those students will only be permitted to compete in sports at one school per year unless they meet certain criteria. The biggest shift there is that nontraditional students must play at the school that they are zoned for provided a school in that area offers the sport that they are seeking to play. Current nontraditional athletes who are playing for schools out of zone will be grandfathered in by the rules. SB 178, dubbed the Teddy Bridgewater Act, allows head coaches to commit up to $15,000 per year to help students in need, although that requires strict oversight and approval.
Pickleball status still work in progress
There was discussion amongst the board about adding pickleball as a sanctioned sport, with the board looking to gain more insight on it later this year. The spring season, a natural fit for pickleball, seems to be off the table. That calendar is heavily congested, and also happens to clash with tennis.
“Still a couple years away,” Damon said about pickleball. “Just from conversation, we can’t do it in spring. To me, fall [season] is probably the best to do it.”
A total of 166 schools said that they would be interested in the FHSAA sanctioning the sport. In the survey of 547 responses, 149 schools said that they offer the sport in PE or as an intramural. Another 48 said that they offer it as a club sport. The bulk of responses (350) said they don’t currently offer the sport in any capacity.