By Jim Walker

jim.walker@irontontribune.com

COLUMBUS — Basketball is a game of movement. For a few area schools, there was some basketball movement off the court as well.

The Ohio High School Athletic Association announced its fall sports divisional breakdowns on Tuesday on the heels of Monday’s release of fall sports.

The OHSAA uses enrollment data provided by the Ohio Department of Education to determine each school’s base enrollment numbers for girls and boys sports, which will be used for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years.

However, although there are several winter sports only basketball utilizes competitive balance when determining a school’s divisional assignment.

Basketball is reconfigured every season while other sports are only reconfigured every two years.

The two local movers in basketball as the Ironton Fighting Tigers and the Fairland Lady Dragons.

Ironton will move up to Division 2 due to its competitive balance numbers. The Fighting Tigers are one of the smallest Division 2 schools in terms of core enrollment with 177 male students. The competitive balance number is 23 which is one more than last year.

Albany Alexander and River Valley also moved up from Division 3 to D2.

Area teams in Division 3 include Coal Grove, Rock Hill, Chesapeake, South Point, Fairalad, Portsmouth, Oak Hill, Wellston, Minford, Portsmouth West, Northwest, Wheelersburg and Lucasville Valley which is up from Division 4.

Division 4 has Ironton St. Jospeh, Symmes Valley, Green, Portsmouth Notre Dame, Sciotoville East New Boston, Portsmouth Clay, Western, South Gallia, South Webster, Beaver Eastern, Reedsville Eastern and Racine Southern.

As for the girls, Fairland came within an eyelash of making the state tournament in Division 3 last season and will return its team in tact and add a strong eighth-grade group.

However, they’ll have to make their run in Division 2 and begin in a region that includes Waverly, Sheridan, Circleville Logan Elm, Circleville, Gallipolis, Philo, Lancaster Fairfield Union, Vinton County, Greenfield McClain, Vincent Warren and Jackson.

Fairland has 197 girls and an eight competitive balance number.

Area teams in Division 3 include Ironton, Rock Hill, Coal Grove, Chesapeake, South Point, Portsmouth, Northwest, Minford, Portsmouth West, Oak Hill, Wheelersburg, Alexander and Wellston.

Girls’ teams from the area in Division 4 include Ironton St. Joseph, Symmes Valley, Green, Portsmouth Notre Dame, New Boston, Sciotoville East, Portsmouth Clay, South Gallia, Racine Southern, Reedsville Eastern, Beaver Eastern.

The OHSAA uses enrollment data provided by the Ohio Department of Education to determine each school’s base enrollment numbers for girls and boys sports, which will be used for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years. Divisional breakdowns for the sports that utilize competitive balance data, which include soccer, volleyball and football in the fall, are reconfigured every year, while non-competitive balance sports are reconfigured every two years using only base enrollment numbers.