> SOUTHERN INDIANA — In 2013, the high school football landscape will undergo a seismic change, and Jeffersonville is on the wrong side of the fault line.

On Friday, the IHSAA Executive Committee approved a portion of a proposal from the Indiana Football Coaches Association calling for a sixth class in high school football, effectively dividing the current Class 5A schools into two separate classes. The top 32 schools by enrollment — of which Jeffersonville is one — will constitute Class 6A, while the lower half by enrollment will stay in 5A.

“That’s a big disappointment,” Jeffersonville coach Lonnie Oldham said.

Oldham is upset because Jeffersonville is among the smallest schools in the new Class 6A, and that the new alignment will separate Jeffersonville from some of its oldest rivals in the tournament.

“We’ll get away from the tradition factor, playing in the same sectional we’ve been playing in for years,” Oldham said.

The new sectional groupings were not announced. However, likely sectional partners for Jeffersonville — provided it’s the only area school that moves to Class 6A — include Columbus North, Center Grove and Southport. There might even be Terre Haute schools in the mix, which would create a travel strain for Red Devil faithful.

However, not everyone in the area football community is upset.  

“The enrollment discrepancy in 5A is so much, something had to be done, and there’s a few ways they could have gone about doing it,” Floyd Central coach Brian Glesing said. “They just divided up the current 5A into two big classes, and that’s — it is what it is, and we’re fine with that.”

When the schools in Class A through Class 4A are getting started with the opening round of the tournament, schools in Class 5A and 6A will be on a bye.

Glesing said he believed that teams will be permitted to schedule a 10th game to keep the revenue flowing and the players sharp, but the release from the IHSAA did not indicate that would be an option for the upperclass schools.

“That is one option that we would have, I believe — I don’t know the official logistics of what’s going down with it — or we could use it as a bye,” Glesing said. “Now one thing that will start playing into that part for us is our new academic calendar. New Albany-Floyd County Schools will be going to a balanced calendar in the future, and that means there’s two weeks off from school in mid-October, right at the start of the sectional. So that bye could be playing right in with our academic fall break. We would have to look into that as well.”

As it currently stands, New Albany is ranked 33rd in enrollment in the state, which makes it the top school in enrollment in Class 5A when 2013 rolls around. However, a reassessment of enrollments could mean that New Albany moves up to 6A.

“You have to look at what the schools above us do, and then there’s the whole (success) factor where they bump schools up and down,” New Albany coach Charlie Fields said.

The IHSAA executive committee also passed a new rule that could force the most successful teams in each class to move up a class.

On a sport-by-sport basis, schools will earn one point for a sectional championship, two points for a regional championship, three points for a semi-state title and four points for a state title. The maximum number of points a team can earn in a single year is four points. Should a school earn six points or more during a specified two-year period — for instance, two state championship game appearances — that school would compete in the next higher enrollment class for the ensuing two seasons. Tournament success achieved during the 2011-12 and 2012-13 school years will be used to determine classifications in 2013-14.

If the IHSAA determines that New Albany is going to be a 6A school, then Floyd Central has some thinking to do, Glesing said.

“One of the things that we’re going to discuss at Floyd with our administration, if the enrollment comes out and New Albany looks like it’s going to be 6A, we might choose to play 6A, just based on keeping Jeffersonville, New Albany and Floyd Central all together in the same sectional,” Glesing said. “That is an option. I’m not saying that we’ll do it, but we’ll definitely look into that possibility if we think that New Albany is going to be in 6A, because it just makes sense for New Albany, Jeffersonville and Floyd Central all to be in the same sectional and the same class.”