(photos by Dan McCauley)
2020-2021 GHSA Region Alignments
It took many tedious hours while binge-watching some of my favorite tv shows, but region and class alignments should now be accurate. Please contact me if your school is not correct. This means subscribers will now be able to run reports in the 'Rankings' menu and compare your squad to others in the same updated class/region based on 2019 xc times. Also, one will be able to run comparisons throughout the upcoming season and virtual meets.
Some of the observations noticed, were that many metro ATL urban schools dropped in class, while some other outlying metro schools jumped up in class. Significant changes affecting solid cross country programs were Harrison moving up to 7A, along with Alpharetta and Gainesville. In metro 7A regions, many schools stayed together in a region, but that region became a new region by name. Denmark made a huge jump from 4A up to 7A! St. Pius X shot up to 5A along with Woodward which will make things interesting with 2019 5A champ Decatur on the boy's side. Blessed Trinity rose to 5A, while Athens area power Oconee County dropped down to 3A. In 2A, the 'de facto public school class', will now have to deal with metro powers Lovett and Pace. A Private saw mainly regions being re-arranged all over, now that the Area meets have been eliminated. An example is what was formerly Area 3/Region 5 has split up into 2 different regions now.
4A and 3A had by far the most re-alignments of any class. 80% of those schools had changes in region/class. Most 2A schools remained in their class and regions. Very few A Public schools went up in class, although regions 1,2 look very different than before and a few 2A schools dropped down into A. Northeast GA schools primarily in class 2A-4A (Region 8) had the least amount of re-alignments.