As a little kid, you might have played a game where someone always beat you no matter what you did. That is basically how most public schools feel when they enter the Indiana High School Football Tournament. This year at the state finals, the winners in 1a, 2a, and 3a were all private schools. This raises the question should the ISHAA change the format in Indiana by having private schools be in a “league of their own”? Many seem to think that it is totally unfair for private schools to be in the tournament with public schools because they can recruit compared to public schools where recruiting is not allowed.
Forty-seven times a private school has won a state championship since the school year of 2000. This is evident when you look at 3a Indianapolis Bishop Chatard which has seventeen state titles according to their own athletic site. Bishop Chatard is perennially in the state title game. Bishop Chatrd seems to do very well in the regular season when they face huge schools like Cathedral and Indianapolis Arsenal Tech beating both schools that play in the 6A tournament. After playing huge schools, Bishop Chatard drops back down during tournament time and beats undefeated 3A teams such as Knox, Tippecanoe Valley, and Hamilton Heights like it is nothing, winning by double digits.
The Lewis Cass Kings know about the struggle of facing private schools in the tournament. The Kings have lost multiple times to private schools in the tournament. This problem does not just affect football. Kings starting guard, Trey Johnson said about having to play against private schools. Johnson said, “I think that it is somewhat unfair because they have many different rules than public schools and they get people from all around the state or even out of state to come play for them. But I do enjoy the competition” Next, Lewis Cass alum and tight end at the University of Indianapolis, Luke Chambers, had this to say about his senior year in football and basketball ending at the hands of private schools. Chambers replied,“No there needs to be another tournament for the private schools only. As they dominate the lower classes of all high school sports.” Chambers also added in his final four high school basketball games in 2023, two of the players on the Blackhawk Christian team came from Michigan for their freshman year. Next, another Lewis Cass 2015 alum, Hunter Clark, shared his thoughts on this topic (seeing as his senior year the football team lost to Lafayette Central Catholic in both the football sectional and baseball semi-state games). I asked Hunter if he thought private schools belong in the State Tournament. Clark said, “My personal opinion,m I think they should be in their own league because they are allowed to recruit kids when little schools like us are basically stuck with what we get, but we made the best with what we had and gave them a tough game my senior year. But then, I also liked playing schools like that because it made us practice that much harder and made us better players”
In conclusion, private schools can recruit players, face bigger schools, and beat them, then drop back down into the smaller class tournaments and destroy teams. So, the question is when is enough enough? When will the IHSAA move these private schools into a league of their own?
