Sports
Which fall and winter Ohio high school sports teams are moving up to Division I?
Two central Ohio fall sports teams are among 14 statewide that have received approval from the Ohio High School Athletic Association to move up to Division I for the 2024 season, the OHSAA announced Wednesday.
St. Charles boys soccer and Westerville Central football, both of which were originally assigned to Division II as part of the OHSAA’s expanded tournament divisions, will return to Division I.
St. Charles advanced to a state semifinal last fall. Central is the only football team in the state to change divisions. No requests were denied, the OHSAA said.
“We belong in Division I with our talent level and our pedigree of success,” St. Charles boys soccer coach Chris Vonau said. “I want to play the best teams in the state come tournament time and so do my players. They were ecstatic that OHSAA approved our application to move up. When I learned that the OHSAA was changing the divisional assignments by adding more divisions for soccer, I immediately began lobbying for an exception process to permit programs like ours to move up.”
Thanks to a referendum passed by OHSAA member schools in May, schools can request a move to Division I on a sport-by-sport basis for one school year.
“Our new head football coach (Josh Franke) is coming from a small school (Toronto) and his aspiration was to coach at the highest level, and Division I is the highest level,” Central athletic director Andy Ey said. “We play a Division I schedule primarily, and our kids want to be Division I and our coaches want to be Division I.”
Five area teams will drop from division I to II. That option was presented to smaller schools in Division I in an attempt to maintain balance between the top two divisions, which were each intended to comprise 64 teams while the other divisions are split as evenly as possible between the remaining schools.
Central Ohio teams moving to Division II are Central Crossing and Westerville North girls basketball, Thomas Worthington boys basketball, Watkins Memorial girls volleyball and Westerville South girls soccer.
“We were the lowest remaining school in Division I and it gave us the opportunity to go down to Division II,” North athletic director Wes Elifritz said. “For our girls basketball program and coach (Steve) Cawley, the best choice (from a competitive standpoint) was to go ahead and take that opportunity to go down to Division II.”
The OHSAA referendum passed 560-217 during the May voting period with 38 schools abstaining. Schools with fall and winter teams that wanted to play in the OHSAA’s big-school division had until June 3 to apply.
Baseball, boys basketball, girls basketball, softball and girls volleyball are expanding from four divisions to seven effective next school year, and boys and girls soccer will be five divisions instead of three.
That expansion was approved in February to mitigate the disparity between the largest and smallest schools in Division I.
Football has had seven divisions since 2013.
Schools have until June 25 to request a move to Division I in wrestling, which had its preliminary divisional breakdowns approved this week.
Here are the remaining statewide changes:
BOYS BASKETBALL
Cincinnati Elder returns to Division I.
GIRLS BASKETBALL
Cincinnati Mount Notre Dame, Cincinnati Seton, Cleveland St. Joseph Academy and Rocky River Magnificat move to Division I. Cleveland John Marshall and Euclid move to Division II.
Magnificat was a state semifinalist this past winter.
BOYS SOCCER
Elder moves to Division I. Cincinnati Sycamore and Cleveland Heights move to Division II.
GIRLS SOCCER
Defending Division I state champion Cuyahoga Falls Walsh Jesuit returns to the big-school division.
GIRLS TENNIS
Ashtabula St. John, Chagrin Falls Kenston and Chardon Notre Dame-Cathedral Latin move to Division I.
GIRLS VOLLEYBALL
St. Joseph Academy and Magnificat change to Division I. Parma Normandy moves to Division II. St. Joseph Academy was a big-school state semifinalist last fall.
Dispatch reporter Frank DiRenna contributed to this story.
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