OSSAA Board approves vote on Rule 14 changes

The Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association Board of Directors approved sending out a ballot for the 480-plus member schools to vote on several changes to OSSAA’s Rule 14 in its regularly scheduled meeting which took place last Wednesday.

Rule 14 is the rule used to classify public and private member schools for the OSSAA’s playoff series. The Rule 14 Committee, made up of administrators from both public and nonpublic member schools commissioned by the board, presented a report at the Dec. 7 board meeting. The board had then discussed possible changes to the rule at each board meeting since then.

Approval by member schools of the ballot, which was slated to be electronically sent to schools on Monday, would see the changes in Rule 14 implemented July 1 in time for the 2023-24 school year. Rejection of the changes on the ballot would keep the current Rule 14 in place.

The ballot’s changes address how private schools that have experienced repeated success within a classification can be “bumped-up” to higher classifications. The ballot does not address separating public and private schools for competition in the playoff series.

Highlights of the changes addressed in the ballot from the current Rule 14 include:

• Allows schools to be bumped up to Class 6AII in football (the current Rule 14 has a ceiling of Class 5A in football).

• Allows schools to continue to be bumped up in classification if the school continues to meet the success criteria, with the exception of football which would have a twoclass bump limit from a school’s average daily membership (ADM) (the current Rule 14 only allows a school to bump up one class from the school’s ADM).

• Defines the success criteria for all athletic activities as finishing in the top four at the end of the season’s playoffs in two of the last three years of playoffs (the current Rule 14 defines the success criteria for the vast majority of athletic activities to be finishing in the top eight).

• Allows in basketball for the boys and girls team to be un-coupled when addressing the success criteria. The exception would be for Classes 6A and 5A because those classes will be playing in district play during the regular season (the current Rule 14 bumps up both the boys and girls team if one of the teams meets the success criteria).

• Stipulates that the least successful public schools will bump down if a private school bumps up in classification, with the exception in Class 4A-B basketball where no teams will bump down if a team is bumped up (the current Rule 14 bumps down the smallest school in ADM from the class where the private school had bumped up).