Commentary
Pickle: Does Uniontown stay Quad A or drop down? If you’ve followed the Uniontown boys’ basketball team at all this season, you’re probably aware of the rumors that the program is considering a drop in classification from Quad-A to Triple-A.
What you may not know is that the decision isn’t quite as simple as it appears to be.
Consider the following nuggets of fact, presented by Dr. Darrell Uphold, Uniontown’s superintendent of schools:
Uniontown’s 2002 graduating class is the district’s smallest since before 1960. It will be replaced by an eighth grade that has 70 more students than this graduating class. Further, Uniontown’s current juniors also are small in numbers, while the current seventh grade has 50 more students.
Of course, PIAA enrollment figures for boys’ basketball include male enrollment in grades nine through 12. The above figures reflect total enrollment increases, but at least some of them are boys.
And each one of them might be significant. While Uniontown’s male enrollment places it in Triple-A for boys’ basketball, it is by the smallest of margins. The cutoff for Quad-A is 431, one male student more than Uniontown’s 430 figure.
The reclassification lasts two more seasons, but Uniontown faces the real possibility that it might drop to Triple-A now only to be forced back to Quad-A in two years.
“That’s the ultimate question right now,” Uphold said. “Are you better off going to Triple-A now, knowing you’re going back up in two years? Or do you stay up in Quad-A and take your lumps?”
For the last three seasons, Uniontown has been giving, not taking, the lumps. The Red Raiders made it to two PIAA and two WPIAL championship games in that span while “playing up” to Quad-A. Uphold stressed that a potential move to Triple-A has nothing to do with the fact Uniontown’s team was full of seniors who won’t be around next season. Coach Dave Shuck also will not return.
“We could have played down the last two years,” Uphold said. “We asked coach Shuck and he said he `wanted to run with the big dogs.’ It was the same way in Las Vegas. They asked us which classification we wanted to play in and we went against the best.”
While Uniontown was successful against the big dogs the last few years, it has become increasingly difficult to compete against some of the bigger schools in the WPIAL and in the state.
“We play against a lot of the Super Quad-A’s in the state,” Uphold said. “They are all significantly bigger than we are.”
Harrisburg High School, for example, has 919 males in its top four grades, more than double Uniontown’s enrollment and they are not among the top enrollment schools in the state. The WPIAL has two schools over 1,000 (Butler and North Allegheny) and another (Seneca Valley) over 900. The rest of the state has 14 schools with male enrollments over 1,000 students.
Connellsville is Fayette County’s largest high school, with male enrollment at 799. Albert Gallatin is at 558 and Laurel Highlands is at 448.
Uniontown’s school board will meet at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the high school music room and will come out of that session with an answer. A Jan. 15 WPIAL deadline for “playing up” has come and gone, but the WPIAL has granted such requests beyond deadlines in the past.
The WPIAL basketball steering committee will meet Wednesday to draw up basketball sections and it must know Uniontown’s intentions by then. If Uniontown’s school board takes no action, the Red Raiders will play Triple-A for the next two seasons. The steering committee’s proposed alignment will be put to a WPIAL Board of Control vote on Thursday, April 25.
Uphold said he thinks the school board is leaning toward dropping to Triple-A. “It looks like that’s going to be the case,” he said. “That is the consensus, but the board will decide.”
Also likely to be discussed is Shuck’s successor. Uphold said the board hopes to act quickly, but prudently.
“Coach Shuck has made it clear, even to the student body, that he is retiring from coaching,” Uphold said. “But we won’t do anything until we get a letter of resignation from him.”
Uphold said the board has “tremendous freedom” to search outside the Uniontown Area Education Association membership for a coach, but noted “we do have several teachers with experience and a basketball background.”
He added that several coaches who have expressed interest in the job have contacted the district.
“Uniontown is a good program, it’s a good job,” Uphold said. “When you realize we’ve only had six basketball coaches in 76 years and we’ve only had six losing seasons, it’s absolutely incredible what has gone on here.”
Sports editor Mike Ciarochi may be reached online at mciarochi@heraldstandard.com