Colbyc36 wrote:How are "Upper State" and "Lower State" schools decided? If one went with latitude, West Florence would be Upper State. No?
Perhaps the taper of the state causes an issue with this.
As a general rule upper and lower state make more sense if you think in terms of elevation instead of latitude. Schools on the coast are lower state, those in the mountains are upper, the dividing line depends on the distribution of schools that fall within the classification and how they can be grouped into reasonably sized regions.
The HSL got
very creative this last cycle. For some reason they swapped the two Columbia area 5A regions, calling the western one "5" and putting it in the lower state, calling the eastern one "4" and putting it in the Upper state. It seems that minimizing travel was a major concern, they ended up regions of various sizes with 26 school in upper state regions and 22 in lower. That imbalance required them to be additionally creative when creating the playoff brackets. Region 4 is an upper state region but the #3 team from region 4 gets seeded into the lower state half of the bracket.
Clear as mud, right? Here's a
Map of 5A
Class 4A is even more goofy with only 7 regions, 4 & 5 are reversed and region 7 only has 4 teams. 4A region 4 is a hybrid, with teams being seeded in both upper and lower sides of the bracket.
