The majority of people attending the IHSAA's series of town hall meeting to discuss the high school basketball postseason want a return to the single-class system championship.
Straw poll numbers released Thursday for the first 10 of 11 statewide town hall meetings has 68 percent of people preferring a single-class playoff instead of the current four-class system used in Indiana.
IHSAA commissioner Bobby Cox and Sen. Mike Delph (R-Carmel) will conclude the two-month town hall series Thursday with a meeting at Gary Roosevelt High School. This final meeting comes after single-class basketball last week had one of its most decisive straw poll victories with people at a town hall meeting in Connersville, Ind., voting 34-7 in favor of the new playoff system
Indiana since the 1997-98 school year has held multiple state tournaments for boys and girls basketball with schools being divided into four classes based on student enrollment. Before this change, all Indiana high schools competed in one state championship tournament in a single-class system.
Thirty-two percent of people voting in the straw polls at the town halls supported the current multi-class system.
These straw poll numbers are slightly higher than statewide 500-person survey conducted by the Wilson Perkins Allen Opinion research group earlier this month about high school basketball. That poll had 52 percent of Hoosiers in favor of single-class basketball, while 31 percent preferred the multiple-class system.
Various legislation was introduced in the Indiana Senate during the most recent General Assembly session in an attempt to end multiple-class basketball.
Delph introduced an education reform bill that included the elimination of multiple-class state championships, but that part of the bill did not reach the Senate floor for a vote. In addition, Sen. Jean Leising (R-Oldenburg) sponsored a bill to end class basketball, but the bill did not receive a committee hearing during the 10-week session.
