Published on August 27, 2026 6:22 am
Last Updated on August 27, 2026 6:22 am
The Illinois High School Association (IHSA) Board of Directors met for its regularly scheduled meeting at the IHSA office in Bloomington on Monday, August 24, 2026, where the Board approved an update to the Classification Policy and provided revised classification cutoffs in multiple IHSA sports that will go into effect for the 2027-2028 school year.
In 2024, the IHSA Board approved significant changes to the IHSA Classification Policy, as well as to the multiplier waiver process, that went into effect for the 2025-26 school year. The changes included moving from a two-year classification cycle to an annual cycle and returning to fix classification cutoffs as opposed to percentage-based cutoffs.
“When revamping the Classification Policy in 2024, one of our goals was to provide member schools with one year notice in advance of any class cutoff changes to help them prepare accordingly,” said IHSA Executive Director Craig Anderson. “All the changes approved today will go into effect during the 2027-28 school year.”
The Board Classification Policy approved in 2024 called for all cutoffs to be rounded to the nearest 50th or 100th numeral. The Board made a slight modification to that on Monday, giving themselves the ability to set cutoffs to the 25th numeral.
“In revisiting the Policy, we recognized that a significant number of schools can be impacted by 25 students in our four-class sports, which can make balancing the total number of competing teams in each class difficult,” said Anderson. “The overall enrollment within our membership is currently declining, so it makes sense to lower some of these cutoffs to keep in line with that trend. The data shows us that the majority of schools who are moving up in classification were competing in that same class just a year or two ago.”
The sports with new classification cutoffs in 2027-28 are below. All other sports will remain the same. Those cutoffs can be found here.
2027-28 CLASSIFICATION CHANGES BY SPORT
Four Class Sports | Baseball, Boys/Girls Basketball, Softball, Girls Volleyball
Class 1A | 1-275
Class 2A | 275.01-600
Class 3A | 600.01-1600
Class 4A | 1600.01 or greater