Size Now Matters in SPC Football
Old Alignment Vs. New alignment
North Zone
FW All Saints
St. Mark’s
Arlington Oakridge
FW Country Day
Tulsa Holland Hall
OKC Casady
FW Trinity Valley
Greenhill
South Zone
Bellaire Episcopal
ESD
Houston Kinkaid
Houston Christian
Houston St. John’s
Cistercian
Independents
Austin St. Andrew’s
Austin St. Stephen’s
San Antonio St. Mary’s Hall
The Woodlands Cooper
4A division
FW All Saints
Bellaire Episcopal
ESD
Houston Christian
Houston Kinkaid
St. Mark’s
Houston St. John’s
3A division
OKC Casady
Cistercian
FW Country Day
Greenhill
The Woodlands Cooper
Arlington Oakridge
FW Trinity Valley
Austin St. Andrew’s
Austin St. Stephen’s
Notes: Holland Hall and St. Mary’s Hall are leaving the SPC in 2016. Hockaday is not included since the changes are for football only.
On its way to an SPC championship this season, Fort Worth All Saints defeated Greenhill, Country Day, and Trinity Valley by a combined 122 points.
Next season, the Saints won’t have any of those opponents on the conference schedule due to an SPC realignment effort designed to create more parity among its member schools.
The private-school conference, which currently has 19 schools (18 of which play football) from Tulsa to San Antonio, has traditionally organized its divisions based on geography, without regard to school size.
That will change beginning with the 2016 football season after the conference’s heads of school voted to divide its football programs into 4A (large school) and 3A (small school) divisions instead.
“Some of the schools have gotten quite a bit larger than the other schools,” said SPC commissioner Bob Windham. “If you look pretty consistently at the records and who’s been more competitive over the years, the larger schools have an advantage.”
Among local schools, St. Mark’s and ESD will continue their rivalry in the 4A division, while Greenhill will be a 3A school. For now, the changes will only affect football, although the SPC could vote to adopt a similar format for other sports in a couple of years, when they will again re-evaluate the plan.
The SPC has traditionally divided football schools based on size only for the playoffs, with separate championship games for large schools and small schools.
Under the new format, the top two teams in each division will play for a championship at the end of the season, and the semifinals will be eliminated.
Windham said that for school officials, safety and competition level were the main considerations for the change.
“There were a lot of people getting beat pretty badly. That starts wearing on people,” he said. “The smaller schools had asked us to consider something different.”
