PIAA’s softening of Competition Formula could ease Wyomissing’s playoff path
2025 Berks football coverage presented by
Utilities Employees Credit Union
When emotions were boiling and Pennsylvania high schools were on the verge of a civil war over the public vs. private debate the PIAA cooled tensions by tightening its transfer rules and enacting its Competition Formula.
The Competition Formula bumped successful programs, using a specified number of transfers, up a classification in an attempt to level the playing field.
How well all of that has worked come playoff time is debatable but the PIAA’s efforts have helped place the age-old debate over transfers and recruiting on the back burner – at least for now.
In an attempt to placate some who feel the Competition Formula has been too harsh the PIAA is in the process of softening the rules so that fewer programs, such as Wyomissing football, are caught in the net along with the most blatant offenders.
The PIAA has reduced the number of success points – accumulated by advancing in the playoffs – needed to trigger the change in classification. It has also raised the minimum number of transfers needed to force a team up a classification.
Once everything is finalized, which could be as early as this summer, it will become more difficult to push top programs up a class.
“We loosened it up a little bit,” said PIAA executive director Dr. Robert Lombardi. “The board didn’t want to be as restrictive.”
No doubt all of this was a response to the PIAA’s contentious battles with Aliquippa, which received a court injunction last year to prevent it from moving up to Class 5A — a couple years after it was moved up to 4A due to the Competition Formula.
Before this latest wave of proposals football teams faced promotion to a higher class if they accumulated six or more success points in a two-year scheduling cycle while also having three or more transfers.
Wyomissing, which reached the PIAA Class 3A semifinals in both 2022 and 2023, earned three success points in each of those seasons. When the PIAA ruled that it had done so with three or more transfers the Spartans were forced to compete in the Class 4A playoffs last season, as they will again this year.
Under the new proposals that wouldn’t have happened. The success points threshold has been raised to seven, meaning a team will have to reach the championship game at least once in a two-year cycle and make it to the semifinals in the other.
Also, the transfer threshold has been raised from three to five student-athletes for football.
“We were seeing teams weren’t getting to championships (but were) moving up, and (that some) teams did get to a championship and didn’t move up,” Lombardi said. “This (new threshold) guarantees you (must) play in a championship game (to be moved up).”
The PIAA settled on five football transfers by taking the number of players a team has on the field (11) and dividing by two. It rounded down from 5 ½ to five.
For basketball, the number will be reduced from three to two: Five divided by two (2 ½) rounded down to two.
The change in number of transfers still needs to pass one more vote by the PIAA Board of Directors; the change to seven success points was approved late last year.
The PIAA is also close to reinstating health and safety concerns as viable ground for appealing a promotion to a higher class. That’s the argument that Aliquippa – which by enrollment is a Class 2A school – used when it balked about going to 5A.
The PIAA has also relaxed its definition of transfers; those that occur “due to a change of family living circumstances necessitated by exceptional circumstances” may be waived.
The PIAA first enacted the parameters for the Competition Formula in 2018. Lombardi notes that although concept is still relatively new but believes it has been effective.
Wyomissing earned one success point in 2024 by beating West York in the District 3 semifinals; its season ended with a loss to Lampeter-Strasburg in the championship game.
That means the Spartans are in position to return to Class 3A for the 2026-2027 scheduling cycle. Even with a state championship in 2025 they would earn a total of five success points, below the expected threshold for the next cycle.
Lombardi realizes the Competition Formula and the state governing body’s tighter control on transfers isn’t a cure-all. There’s only so much that can be done on paper.
“There’s not a state in the country that has figured it out,” he said the long-standing concern about students transferring for athletic purposes. “We think we’re pretty close here.”
