Private vs. Public: Delaware proposes to use success over enrollment to decide how teams are split up for postseason

Adding another potential wrinkle to the world of Private vs. Public talk taking over the high school sports scene. The Delaware Interscholastic Athletic Association (DIAA) is proposing starting in the fall of 2027 changing up the way high school sports teams will qualify for state tournaments, according to a report by the Delaware News Journal.

Per the report, the DIAA would use recent performance success over school enrollment to decide how teams are split up for postseason play in 11 sports, excluding football which already implements a similar system, starting in the fall of 2027. A team’s success rate will have up to 80 percent taken into account, with the other 20 percent being the school’s enrollment.

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“We’ve met what Sen. [Eric] Buckson and his original task force asked us to do, which was to come up with a system that is objective, measurable and consistent and will increase the amount of participants in state tournaments and give more schools an opportunity to win a state championship,” Committee Chairman Joe Thomson said in the report.

The DIAA made the proposal to shift to a performance over enrollment for state postseason placement due to the dominance shown by private schools over publics, especially in the Blue Hen Conference.

Schools towards the bottom 10 percent of a class like Division I, can voluntarily move down to Division II for reasons varying like safety, incorrect calculations, or enrollment/performance errors. Conference champions would still receive automatic bids into the state tournaments, but high schools will see an increase from the 46 percent that take part in the postseason.

With the overhaul set to begin for the 2027-28 high school sports calendar, the emphasis of the changes was to provide the best opportunity for programs around the state a more realistic chance to win a state championship.

The Delaware high school sports that are set to be impacted by the change are the following:

Boys & Girls Soccer
Boys & Girls Basketball
Boys & Girls Volleyball
Boys & Girls Lacrosse
Field Hockey
Softball
Baseball

The current proposal will now go to the DIAA Board of Directors for final approval set for June, 2026. If passed, the new system is set to begin for the fall state tournaments next year.

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