In June we reported the Florida High School Athletic Association created a separate division for rural schools in eight sports, the rural division cleared another hurdle this week with the necessary number of teams agreeing to join. FHSAA Executive Director Roger Dearing said Tuesday, "33 football-playing schools which meet the rural division requirements ... have notified the FHSAA they will join," D. C. Reeves of The Pensacola News Journal reports. "Each classification of any sport is required to have 32 teams to make the rural division viable for state championship competition."
"I'm very pleased," Dearing said. "One of the things I've tried to press since I came on is that we've got 788 member schools and we've got (rural schools) that have been saying something about having to compete against (metro area) schools that draw from a much larger territory. I think this answers that concern for them." FHSAA sent inquiry forms to 59 schools that met the rural division requirements. While the initial proposal set up an eight-sport division, soccer will no longer be included as many of the rural schools didn't have teams. The division is scheduled to begin in the 2011-12 school year. (Read more)
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