Blogs by Hof

Copyright SB Live Sports, 2023 Thanksgiving week is a prominent time in Illinois high school sports. The football state championships provide closure on the seasons for the top programs in the state, girls basketball is in its second week of action, and it's the first glimpse at how boys basketball teams will fare as the season progresses. Beyond the official scorebook, there's another rapidly changing stat that goes underappreciated in boys basketball: Land on the map. The 2023-24 @IHSA_IL Boys Basketball season tips off TOMORROW! Here are the opening Voronoi maps for each class ahead of Day 1. (1/2) - @NestoHoops pic.twitter.com/e3nCLhy2sa — HSLogos (@hslogoscom) November 19, 2023 The Voronoi Map Who is the closest undefeated basketball team to your county? That's the idea behind the IHSA Boys Basketball Voronoi Map, developed by WIU student Levi Maierhofer and shared on [at]hslogoscom on X (Twitter).  Inspired by the work of Joey Loose , who runs a similar map for NCA...

Copyright The State Journal-Register, 2023 It's one thing to just talk about splitting up public and private postseasons in the IHSA. It's another thing to see what it actually could look like, especially in football. With the rise of 8-man, the advantaged dominance of private schools, and the slow decline of small public schools in 11-man football, now is as good a time as ever to re-evaluate the way the IHSA football postseason is held. 8-Man Rising In 2023, the Illinois 8-Man Football Association (I8FA) consisted of 28 schools competing for 16 playoff spots in a single class. The number of schools is set to grow next year, with at least one team (West Carroll in Savanna) announcing its move to 8-man. Copyright Shaw Local, 2023 8-man football has become a popular option for schools with small enrollments who want to keep playing football but don't have the manpower to continue fielding 11-man teams. It's been a savior for historically strong programs such as Milledge...

Earlier this week, the IHSA released its full list of 23 proposals for the 2023-2024 year.  These proposals range from a reduction in summer contact days to an adoption of a district format for football. Copyright IHSA, 2023 A couple of these proposals jumped off the page at me, and none stirred up more opinions than Proposal 13, which would remove the private school enrollment multiplier and replace it "with enrollments of non-boundary schools to be the average enrollment of all public/boundary high schools that are above that school’s enrollment and within a 30-mile radius of the school." Who it helps... Proposal 13 was submitted by Williamsville High School's Adam Eucker on behalf of the entire Sangamo Conference. This conference is made up of ten Central Illinois public high schools, with enrollments between 300 and 600.  Copyright The State Journal-Register, 2023 The Sangamo is made of 1A and 2A teams in sports with the 4-class system and mostly 2A and 3A teams in f...