State legislator taking another stab at separate playoffs for public, private schools
2025 Berks football coverage presented by
Utilities Employees Credit Union
It’s long been obvious that the playing field is not level in Pennsylvania high school sports. Private, parochial, and charter schools have a distinct advantage over public schools when it comes to drawing top student-athletes.
That was apparent during the PIAA boys basketball tournament earlier this year when each of the six champions and 10 of the 12 finalists were from “non-boundary” schools.
The Class 6A championship game, between Father Judge and Roman Catholic, featured a pair of Philadelphia Catholic League powers; the Class 4A title game paired Devon Prep of the Catholic League against Berks Catholic.
That’s out of whack in a state where more than 75 percent of the PIAA’s members are public schools.
The results were similar in football last fall when four of the six champions, including those in the three largest classifications – St. Joseph’s Prep, Bishop McDevitt, and Bonner-Prendergast – were Catholic schools.
State representative Scott Conklin is again taking a stab at doing something about the issue. The Centre County Democrat has authored a bill that would allow the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association to create separate playoffs and championships for boundary and non-boundary schools.
That bill made it out of committee earlier this week by a 20-6 vote and now heads to the state House for consideration.
(Jeremy Drey Photography)
It would need to be approved by the House, then the Senate, then signed by the governor to become law.
Even though Gov. Josh Shapiro has expressed support of such a concept in the past, seeing this bill become law remains a longshot.
Conklin, and others, have tried before to reverse a 1972 state law that authorized private schools to participate with public schools in postseason athletic competition.
All prior measures have failed, leading to great angst among public school coaches and administrators.
“PIAA officials’ hands have been tied because of a decades-old requirement that prohibits them from updating the playoff system,” Conklin said in a statement. “My bill would clear the way and allow the PIAA to level the playing field once and for all.”
Several years ago, in response to what amounted to a potential mutiny by public schools across the state, the PIAA tightened its transfer rules and imposed the “Competition Formula,” which pushed consistently winning programs, such as Imhotep Charter, Bishop Guilfoyle, Archbishop Wood, and Bishop McDevitt up one classification or more.
While those measures have been successful in some areas they have failed to stop the domination in some sports of non-boundary schools.
“The current system isn’t just putting public school athletes at a disadvantage, it’s endangering their health and safety,” Conklin said. “It’s forcing students from public schools, which must recruit from within district boundaries, to compete against students from private schools, which can recruit from anywhere and amass teams that are larger and stronger.
“The system is also depriving public school students of scholarship and recruitment opportunities and teaching them the wrong lessons. K-12 sports are supposed to be about building confidence and reinforcing concepts of fair play and good sportsmanship. We can’t be doing that with a system that puts some students on an unlevel playing field before they even walk out onto the field.”
