Nolan Sharick and Fairfield boys basketball will drop down, along with the girls basketball team, to Class 2-A with the announcement of the new IHSAA basketball alignments. (File photo by Mike Deak)

INDIANAPOLIS – With the dust settled on the 2018-19 IHSAA basketball state tournaments, the Association announced its classifications for the upcoming 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons.

Nothing really changes with most of the area schools with the exception of a couple programs moving up and down that will affect area sectionals.

Fairfield, South Central (Union Mills) and South Bend Career Academy will directly affect area sectionals in both boys and girls tournaments. Fairfield drops out of Class 3-A to 2-A, which will impact Sectional 21’s alignments. The Falcons, which were a 3-A semi-state girls program two seasons ago and a 3-A regional boys team three years ago, will head back to 2-A in both boys and girls alignments where it resided until 2012. South Central and SBCA both move up to Class 2-A in both boys and girls after dwelling in Sectional 51, which has been hosted by Triton in recent years.

Overall in the area, the girls alignments saw more movement than the boys. Columbia City, Marion and defending champion Northwestern are all notables moving up to 4-A, while South Bend Clay and Fort Wayne Dwenger drop down the 3-A. Central Noble, after its tremendous run the past two seasons, moves up to 3-A and is a possibility to move into Sectional 21. Michigan City Marquette, the 1-A champion, moves up to 2-A on success factor while Three Rivers Conference member North Miami drops down to 1-A.

On the boys side, Marion and Culver Academy move up to 4-A, the Giants making the semi-state and the Eagles playing in the state finals in each of the last two years. Marion was the host of the regional which Sectional 21 was fed, that being Tippecanoe Valley representing this season, so the 3-A regional bracket will likely need a new host. Fort Wayne Dwenger and South Bend Clay also drop down to 3-A on the boys side while 1-A state champion Fort Wayne Blackhawk along with Michigan City Marquette both move up to 2-A on success factors. One interesting notation in the north is the drop down of Luke Brown and Blackford to Class 2-A, Brown being the leading scorer in the state as just a sophomore.

Carmel is once again the largest school in the state with 5,286 students, 1,359 of those freshmen, which the class alone is larger than 29 schools in Class 4-A. Kankakee Valley (3A), Eastern (Greentown) girls and Boone Grove boys (2A), and Tecumseh girls and Fremont boys (1A) are the largest schools in their respective classes.

The IHSAA plans to release its sectional alignments later this month for all sports except softball and baseball, which will be released in August after the state’s first committee meeting for the new year.