Gulf Breeze volleyball head coach Steven Clay knew the concept of an FHSAA Open Division had been floating around for years.
He just wasn’t sure it would be happening so soon.
June 9 marked a new era in Florida High School sports as the Open Division was approved by the FHSAA Board of Directors, drawing praise in certain aspects from several area coaches but raising questions with others.
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I know in volleyball this general conversation comes up from time to time,” Clay said. “Because there’s been just a handful of schools, a lot of time the private schools, that just kill everybody in their classification.”
How will the Open Division work?
The Open Division will take the top eight teams via the MaxPreps rankings regardless of classification in 11 sports to determine a true state champion.
The eight teams will be broken up into two pods. Pod A will be the No. 1, 4, 5 and 8 seed. Pod B will be the No. 2, 3, 6 and 7 seeds. The top two seeds in each pod will get two home games, while the bottom two seeds will get one, allowing them to still make some of the money from playoff games that would under the old format.
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The round-robin games will follow the same schedule as the regional quarterfinals, semifinals and finals for other classifications. The two teams in each pod will advance to the state semifinals. There were still be a state championship bracket in the traditional classifications.
Much of the discussion has centered around football, but it wouldn’t have had a big impact on the state’s biggest sport in the Pensacola area last year.
The only area teams who likely would have qualified for it last year were Gulf Breeze girls volleyball and Pace softball. Several other teams may have had a different path through the playoffs if the Open Division was in place.
Costs and potentially diminished state championships are concerns
For Clay, the competitor in him likes putting the best teams together and seeing who can call themselves the best team in Florida. It’s similar to club volleyball, where coincidentally, the open division is the highest division.
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But he sees the logistics as challenging. Local teams are used to traveling to the playoffs, with Region 1 usually stretching out to Jacksonville and sometimes close to Orlando.
In this format, trips could go even further south down towards Miami, with potentially two overnight trips in the round robin format, then another if they advance to the state semifinals. Usually, the overnight trips only come when a team reaches the Final Four.
Clay was an assistant on the Gulf Breeze girls volleyball team that advanced to the state championship in 2024. He estimates that trip to Winter Haven cost at least $5,000.
Teams can’t budget for this at the beginning of the season, and many across Escambia and Santa Rosa County have to send out last minute fundraisers on social media to help pay for long playoff road trips.
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“As much as you would love to get to the finals every year, it’s not an expense you can necessarily budget for,” Clay said. “Because it just costs so much.”
Pace softball head coach Lexi Alexander had similar concerns. When the Patriots won the 6A state championship in Longwood last month, Santa Rosa County paid for the vans they used to travel and the booster club covered the hotel rooms. Still, food cost about $2,000 and she estimated without help it would’ve been an additional $5,000 to $6,000.
In six straight Final Four appearances, Pace has never had to travel for a regional playoff game.
“Who’s to say the county going to pay for those other two trips going down south or wherever you have to play?” Alexander said.
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Alexander is also concerned about diluting classifications. Pace has reached the 6A state championship in each of her four seasons as head coach, winning two in arguably the toughest classification in the state.
All four years, at least two teams in 6A have finished in the top 8 in Florida’s rankings. This year, three of the 6A state semifinalists were in the top eight. The other was ranked 10th. Winning a state championship is already hard enough and Alexander wonders why it needs to get harder for the top teams.
This year, five softball state champions ended up in the top 8 of MaxPreps Final Rankings. Only one would win a title next season.
To her, it would be better to just take the top eight teams after the state tournament to decide a true champion. But the Patriots won’t be backing down if they qualify for the Open Division in 2027.
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“I don’t want them going in with a negative mindset of ‘oh, we’re going to have to play one of the top eight teams in the state,” Alexander said. “Because shoot, if we’re one of the top teams in the state, then somebody’s going to have to play us too.”
The same goal and challenge remains for Pensacola area teams
The Open Division was approved to see superpowers across the state square off. It could also serve as an example for teams who eventually want to crash the party.
This past winter, Pensacola Catholic girls soccer qualified for the state semifinals for the first time since 2013. Its opponent, Montverde Academy, was on a different level.
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The Phoenix were ranked No. 2 in the entire state and nationally, meaning they would’ve qualified for the Open Division if it were in place last year and not competed in the 3A playoffs. Montverde outclassed Catholic 5-0 before beating Cardinal Gibbons another team, who would’ve qualified for the Open Division, in the 3A final.
Then Crusaders head coach John Guidroz looked at five coaches on the Montverde sideline, while he had just one assistant coach. His team practiced a couple days a week, sharing space not just with football in the fall, but boys soccer in the winter and then boys and girls lacrosse as their postseason run continued.
Montverde, he said, has dedicated field space to practice every day and a club for their players to develop outside of the high school season. Some of Florida’s best high school programs are smaller private schools in lower classifications, with the money and resources to recruit not just statewide but internationally to prepare athletes for the next level.
Schools like Montverde will be able to build consistent Open Division contenders right away. Others will have to figure out what program level is best for them and what their goals are, especially with school choice and open enrollment in Florida, Guidroz, said.
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“I find it funny because the rules are the same across Florida,” Guidroz said. “Just because one schools does and the other school doesn’t, that doesn’t make it wrong. Everybody’s just got to make a decision.”
For the state’s best teams, winning a state championship becomes that much harder in the Open Division. The road may be easier for others who couldn’t compete with the best of the best, though there’s still not a shortcut to the top.
Area schools may see the top team or two in a class removed from traditional classifications if they don’t make the Open Division themselves. Either options still means long road trips and having to raise the level of play against better competition on increasingly bigger stages to bring a state title back to Florida’s northwest corner.
“At the end of the day, it’s not a huge, huge change for us,” Clay said. “There’s just so many strong teams in Central and South Florida that if you want to be a legitimate state champion coming from the Panhandle, you gotta work your tail off, you gotta have a really solid team, and let’s face it, you have to catch a little bit of luck.”
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola area coaches react to new FHSAA Open Division
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