By BAKER ELLIS / Sports Editor

While only three Shelby County schools were shifted to a different class with the Jan. 20 reclassification announcement, the changes will send tremors throughout the state that will affect even those schools that did not move up or down a class. This definitely holds true for Shelby County schools, as a number of schools that remained in the same class will be playing sports in areas and regions that look semi-to-completely different. Let’s take a look at five ways the reclassification will affect teams that did not change classes.

 

1. For starters, Shelby County High School has been cast in a northern area for football. The Wildcats spent the last two years playing as the northernmost team in 5A Region 3, but will now be the southernmost designated team in a northern region across the state in 5A in their new role as a Region 5 team. Due to the lack of high schools in south Alabama compared to central and north Alabama, the demarcation line to separate northern and southern regions has to rise almost to Birmingham to make sure there are an even number of northern and southern designated teams. This reality leaves Shelby County schools especially susceptible to flip-flopping between northern and southern regions depending on how the classification structure breaks down, and the Wildcats are living proof.

The new Shelby County region, Region 5, has no other holdovers from the old Region 3. The new region includes newly designated 5A school Briarwood, along with Fairfield, Moody, Pleasant Grove, Saint Clair County, Wenonah and Woodlawn.

 

2. Oak Mountain will switch areas with Vestavia Hills starting in 2016-17, moving from Area 5 to Area 6, which will affect the Eagles for basketball, baseball, softball and soccer. This will not make much of a difference in soccer, as both the Oak Mountain boys and girls soccer teams are defending 7A state champions, and whatever area the Eagles play in won’t matter as they will be at or near the top regardless. This will however affect boys basketball, especially for the 2016-17 season.

The other teams in Area 6 include state powers Mountain Brook and Spain Park, and while Area 5 also has defending state champion Hoover, that area’s future does not look quite as daunting as the one in Area 6 does. Oak Mountain is currently having something of a renaissance year on the basketball court, with a 16-7 record as of Jan. 21 and a No. 8 ranking in class 7A. For the Eagles’ success to continue into future seasons, they are going to have to find a way to knock off one of the two teams widely acknowledged to be the best teams in 7A.

 

3. Chelsea and Pelham, along with Helena, are going to get very familiar with each other over the next few years. The Hornets, Panthers and Huskies have been grouped together in 6A Area 8 for baseball, soccer, basketball and softball, and are the only three teams in that area. This means at least six times a year in each of these sports, two of these teams will square off against each other in the regular season. Both Helena, which broke off from Pelham in 2014, and Pelham challenged for a boys soccer state title and a baseball state title last year in the 5A and 6A classifications, and now that they are placed in the same area along with Chelsea will undoubtedly lead to a deep rivalry between the three.

 

4. The Westminster School at Oak Mountain, the current defending 1A-3A champion in boys soccer, is moving to Area 3 from Area 4. This means the Knights will now be in the same area as in-county rival Indian Springs. Westminster and Springs are perennially two of the top soccer programs in the state, especially at the 1A-3A level, and the new switch means the two will have to play each other at least twice in the regular season. Because the top two teams in each area advance to the state playoffs, the possibility actually now exists for both teams to advance farther in the state playoffs than before when they were in opposing areas.

 

5. Vincent is going to be burning some rubber over the next few years. The Yellow Jackets are by far the westernmost team in 2A Area 10, and are in the new area with Ranburne and Woodland, the closest of which is an hour and 20 minutes away from Vincent High School. The Yellow Jackets did not have the most ideal situation before, with current area mate Thorsby High School being almost an hour away, but if Vincent was hoping to reduce travel costs over the next few seasons, it unfortunately has another thing coming.