Jack Ludtke
Reporter
Our focus this week is the two primary sports divisions that NCHS athletics compete in for glory, recognition, and fun, and some of the other conferences that call this area home.
FCIACs, States, and CIACs are words that are tossed around a lot here at NCHS. All season long, teams vie and look to play in these tournaments with the eventual goal of winning it all. But what exactly are they winning? The average student, who might only play a freshman or JV level sport, or no sport at all, could easily become confused with all of this terminology. For these students, we will look at who and what each division actually encompasses.
FCIAC is an acronym for “Fairfield County Interscholastic Athletic Conference”, and as the name suggests, is an athletic conference exclusively for Connecticut’s own Fairfield County. It includes 17 public schools in the area (NCHS, Darien High School, Greenwich High School, etc.) and two private schools (St. Joseph’s and Trinity Catholic). Founded in 1961 within six sports, the FCIAC has expanded to boast a diverse number of sports, from cheerleading to football. This conference pits all the schools within the area against each other, no matter how large or small they may be, and does not have divisions that divide schools into different groups. This structure favors larger schools, but gives a better feel for sectional dominance in any given sport. Though over 100 tournament games are played in this division each year, it is considerably smaller and more localized than many other conferences in the area.
The CIAC is the athletics branch of the CAS (Connecticut Association of Schools), and is subject to the CAS’s rules and bylaws. The CIAC itself is an acronym for “Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference”, and it includes many schools from the state of Connecticut. That’s why this league and its tournaments are called “states”; schools from all over Connecticut participate in it. The CIAC includes around 175 schools from the state every year, both public and private. In more popular team sports, such as basketball or football, the CIAC is most often split into four leagues (LL, L, M, and S), but depending on the sport, the CIAC may contain only two or three leagues if there are not enough schools to fill out a full four divisions. The divisions are split based on high school class size, in order to separate the bigger schools from the smaller schools so that a school may play against another school of similar size. In football, for example, a school is considered “Class S” if it has an average class size of 403 students, and “Class M” if its average class size is 404 students to 525 students. This structure definitely favors smaller schools, because a small school that has a smaller surplus of talent in a specific sport stands a chance if it plays schools similar to it. Remember, bigger class size in theory means more people to try out for a team and a larger chance for a talented team.
Now you may wonder if all schools in the state are confined to these two leagues. This For example, directly north of Fairfield County is a high school sports league known as the “Southwest Conference”. It contains many of the schools in the southwest of Connecticut (and not in Fairfield County), with notable members like Bunnell, Weston and Masuk High Schools. Much like the FCIAC, it pits the schools within it regardless of size to ascertain sectional dominance. Like the FCIAC, most of its members are in the CIAC, and indeed have played teams like NCHS in many sports. Another local high school league is the NEPSAC. The NEPSAC, or “New England Preparatory School Athletic Conference”, covers the entirety of the Northeast and has several smaller leagues within it. Teams in these smaller leagues compete to become champions, which then leads to these champions competing in a final all-NEPSAC tournament. The local Connecticut branch of the NEPSAC is called the Fairchester League, and includes Connecticut private schools such as St. Luke’s, Hopkins, and Brunswick. This structure also favors larger schools, because all schools in the leagues play each other regardless of size. However, because most prep schools are smaller, the advantage is often less of a factor.
Well, I hope this guide helps you, the parent, the non-athletic kid, or even the new student athlete, exactly what the NCHS athletics and other local schools are playing for, and why they play the teams that they do. Hopefully because of this, you will go to games, either to play or to watch, with some more insight.
Stay tuned for next week, where I will give you a preview of the Rams sports week to come, and a preview of the Boys Basketball Team.
– Armchair Athlete
