Tucker will say goodbye to region rivals M.L. King, Stephenson and Southwest DeKalb next year and say hello to Lovejoy, its state-championship football opponent in 2011, in the new Region 2-AAAAAA.
The Georgia High School Association put its 451 member schools into regions Tuesday for the 2014-15 and 2015-16 school years.
Tucker will play in the highest classification for the first time in nearly 30 years and join what for the past two seasons has been considered a soft football region. But 2-AAAAAA now will feature two-time region champion Lovejoy along with Tucker, the team that beat Lovejoy for the Class AAAA state title in 2011.
Meanwhile, Tucker’s old 6-AAAAA will be crowded next year.
The decision of 11 Georgia schools to play up in AAAAA next year caused a logjam that resulted in the GHSA putting 17 teams in Region 6. One subregion is DeKalb County-dominated, with schools such as M.L. King, Miller Grove, Southwest DeKalb and Stephenson. The other will be consist of schools from Clayton and Henry counties.
Reclassification will interrupt some rivalries and bring back others. Marist and St. Pius, Catholic-school rivals that have not met in football since 2009, will be in Region 6-AAAA, with St. Pius moving up in class. But Westminster, the state’s most successful sports program the past decade, will move up to Region 5-AAA, leaving behind Buckhead-neighbor Lovett, of 6-AA.
For the first time, the GHSA allowed schools to play football in one classification and other sports in another. This affected only three schools, all in South Georgia, where travel concerns are paramount.
Camden County will return to 1-AAAAAA for football but be allowed to play lower, in 2-AAAAA, in other sports with coastal neighbors Brunswick and Glynn Academy. Thomas County Central and Bainbridge also were allowed to play football in one region (1-AAAAA) and other sports in another (1-AAAA).
The GHSA also saved Evans, Effingham County and Richmond Hill from playing in the highest classification, where their enrollment fell, because of isolation and travel concerns. Effingham and Richmond Hill will play in 3-AAAAA. Evans will play in 2-AAAAA. Cook, a middle-sized AAA school, was moved up to 1-AAAA to compete against closer schools for similar isolation concerns.
Schools may appeal to make lateral transfers from one region to another in the same class by Dec. 13. The GHSA will ratify reclassification Jan. 13.
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