The West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission (WVSSAC, but colloquially referred to as SSAC) is the main governing body of high school sports, cheerleading, and marching bands in

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the Bur ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. For sports other than basketball schools are divided into three classes by total enrollment in grades 9-12: A (less than 450 students), AA (451-800 students), and AAA (more than 800 students), with schools re-classed every four years. Football, baseball, cheerleading, golf, softball, track, and volleyball are broken into these three classes. Soccer, Cross country, tennis, and wrestling are broken into two classes (AAA and AA/A combined). Swimming is one class only. For basketball, schools are divided into four classes. Schools have the option of playing "up" one class in a particular sport. The organization began with boys' basketball championships in 1914. During the decades of segregated schools in West Virginia, it excluded schools for African American students. They competed in the West Virginia Athletic Union. The organization excluded private schools until 1979, when it merged with the state Catholic League. Today it also includes private schools of various religious viewpoints, along with all public schools in the state. Unlike similar governing bodies in the

, the WVSSAC does not dictate individual high school schedules during the regular season; those decisions are made by the coaches involved. Note that the WVSSAC does set forth some basic guidelines (i.e., the number of schools within its own classification or higher that a school must compete against) for a school to be eligible for that sport's playoffs. The WVSSAC determines scheduling during the playoffs. For example, in football, whose playoffs are seeded on a statewide basis, each game is played at the higher-seeded school's campus if its stadium is approved by the SSAC to host playoff matches. Otherwise, it is played at the SSAC-approved venue nearest to the higher-seeded school. The lower-seeded school has the choice of one of three starting times — 7:30 pm on Friday or Saturday, or 1:30 pm on Saturday.

Activities

* Band *

Baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

–

Appalachian Power Park GoMart Ballpark is the current home field for the Charleston Dirty Birds, a baseball team in the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball. It also has been used by the baseball programs of West Virginia University, Marshall University, and t ...

, Charleston *

Basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

–

Charleston Civic Center The Charleston Coliseum & Convention Center (originally known as Charleston Civic Center) is a municipal complex located in the downtown area of Charleston, West Virginia, United States. Originally completed in 1958, it consists of four main co ...

, Charleston *

Cheerleading Cheerleading is an activity in which the participants (called cheerleaders) cheer for their team as a form of encouragement. It can range from chanting slogans to intense physical activity. It can be performed to motivate sports teams, to ente ...

– Charleston Civic Center, Charleston * Cross country – Cabell Midland High School, Ona *

Football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

( Super Six) –

Wheeling Island Stadium Wheeling Island Stadium is a stadium used mostly for American football and soccer located on Wheeling Island in Wheeling, West Virginia. The original portion of the stadium was dedicated on June 10, 1927, but a large concrete seating section was ad ...

, Wheeling *

Golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

(site changes from year to year) *

Soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

–

YMCA YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It was founded on 6 June 1844 by George Williams in London, originally ...

, Beckley *

Softball Softball is a game similar to baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level. The game was first created in 1887 in Chicago by George Hanc ...

– Jackson Park, Vienna *

Swimming Swimming is the self-propulsion of a person through water, or other liquid, usually for recreation, sport, exercise, or survival. Locomotion is achieved through coordinated movement of the limbs and the body to achieve hydrodynamic thrust that r ...

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West Virginia University West Virginia University (WVU) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Morgantown, West Virginia. Its other campuses are those of the West Virginia University Institute of Technology in Beckley, Potomac State College ...

, Morgantown *

Tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball ...

–

Watt Powell Tennis Annex The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James W ...

and

Player's Club Tennis Center John Player & Sons, most often known simply as Player's, was a tobacco and cigarette manufacturer based in Nottingham, England. In 1901, the company merged with other companies to form The Imperial Tobacco Company to face competition from US ma ...

, Charleston *

Track Track or Tracks may refer to: Routes or imprints * Ancient trackway, any track or trail whose origin is lost in antiquity * Animal track, imprints left on surfaces that an animal walks across * Desire path, a line worn by people taking the shorte ...

–

Laidley Field The University of Charleston Stadium at Laidley Field is an 18,500-capacity stadium located in downtown Charleston, West Virginia, near the West Virginia State Capitol complex. It features a FieldTurf playing field for football and facilities for ...

, Charleston *

Volleyball Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules. It has been a part of the official program of the Summ ...

– Charleston Civic Center, Charleston *

Wrestling Wrestling is a series of combat sports involving grappling-type techniques such as clinch fighting, throws and takedowns, joint locks, pins and other grappling holds. Wrestling techniques have been incorporated into martial arts, combat ...

– Mountain Health Arena, Huntington

Controversies

Prior to the decision in ''

Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...

'', West Virginia maintained "colored" high schools. These schools, and thus their students, were barred from competition in the WVSSAC. The institution now known as

West Virginia State University West Virginia State University (WVSU) is a public historically black, land-grant university in Institute, West Virginia. Founded in 1891 as the West Virginia Colored Institute, it is one of the original 19 land-grant colleges and universities ...

funded an unofficial "state colored championship" in basketball and football until 1959. The WVSSAC historical records take no note of these champions, and does not note that its champions prior to that year competed in a system that excluded many of the state's best athletes. West Virginia was one of only three states to hold girls' basketball in the fall, and girls' volleyball in the winter, ostensibly due to facility shortages at various high schools. Eventually the

West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia is the state supreme court of the state of West Virginia, the highest of West Virginia's state courts. The court sits primarily at the West Virginia State Capitol in Charleston, although from 1873 t ...

ruled that this unfairly disadvantaged girls in competition for college scholarships and the organization was forced to adopt a traditional schedule. There have also been complaints that the disparity of enrollment in Class AAA makes it difficult for the smaller schools in the classification to compete, particularly in football. There is a 1032 student difference between Cabell Midland and Ripley, Cabell Midland being the largest and Ripley being the smallest schools in the class respectively. On the other hand, there is only a 473 student difference between Ripley and the smallest Class AA school, Man. The last time a AAA school with an enrollment under 1000 students won a football championship was Nitro in 1998. In the 2016 re-class the number of AAA schools was reduced in order to reduce the disparity in enrollment.

References

External links

West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission
{{NFHS Sports in West Virginia Public education in West Virginia High school sports associations in the United States