When the Arkansas Activities Association released classification assignments for cycle of the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 school years, Booneville officials learned sports programs will remain a member of Class 3A.
However, looking into the future, that assignment is tenuous, at best.
Booneville’s three-year average attendance of 251.33 students in the grades of 9-11, which the classification system uses to rank Class 7A through Class 2A football playing schools, places Bearcat football as the second largest in Class 3A. Only Glen Rose’s 254 average student count is larger.
The smallest enrollment for a Class 4A football program is the 260 students in Dumas.
For now, there are 48 football playing schools in Class 3A, but that could easily change in December.
In previous cycles, non-public schools were assigned one classification higher than a likewise public-school enrollment would have placed the school.
That changed with the creation of the Competitive Equity Factor which will rate the private school programs based on success over a four-year period.
Those who accumulate at least 10 points – one for a conference winning record, two for winning a playoff game, three for playing in a state title game, or four for winning a state title – over four playing years will be forced to play an additional classification higher.
Several schools are already assured of moving up a classification for football which will likely create odd numbers in some conferences rather than the traditional eight team alignment in place for years.
Conversely, programs that score 3 to 9 points will continue in their current classification, and those with fewer than 3 points can drop one classification. At least two non-public schools are currently in line to drop a classification for football.
Booneville has been a Class 3A program in all sports for the last two cycles, after spending the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 school years in 4A.
While a return to Class 4A for football may be on the horizon, for all other sports, Bearcat programs would appear to be in little danger of making a move.
That’s because the same enrollment figures are used to create Class 6A through Class A in all other sports and have different breaking points due to some schools not participating in football and there being only one 16-team classification at the top, rather than the two there are for football.
For basketball, baseball/softball, et all., the 251.33 enrollment figure ranks Bearcat programs 22nd among the current 59 schools assigned to the classification.
In either case, exactly which opposing schools Booneville will face in conference action is still an unknown as the AAA has yet to announce those assignments for the coming cycle.
