With the FHSAA releasing the final football classifications and districts for the 2024 and 2025 seasons on Thursday afternoon, a lot of coaches finally could relax and breathe a sigh of relief when it comes to this part of the reclassification process that happens every two years.

Now with the dust settled – mostly – here are four takeaways from the final list:

Number of three team districts remains the same

When looking at the final list of districts, the number of three team districts compared to last year stayed the same with 23 districts, something that most hope would have shrunk during this reclassification.

That means now for those teams in the three-team districts, they will be on the hook to find eight additional games for their schedules over the next two seasons. That could be a struggle for some schools who are struggling greatly to find games, while other schools should be able to fill in their schedule without too much issue.

Classes 1A and 2A take the most impact of schools leaving for the SSAA

With a handful schools opting for the Sunshine State Athletic Association (SSAA) that were initially assigned in the tentative assignments, Classes 1A and 2A took the biggest hits with schools that are departing the state series. Each classification respectively which initially had over 60 teams for the classification are now sitting both currently at 57 schools each.

One of the biggest examples of that hit that we see is where Class 1A-District 8 was completely gutted from the tentative assignments which initially assigned Bishop McLaughlin (Spring Hill), Cambridge Christian (Tampa), Carrollwood Day (Tampa), and Zephyrhills Christian to the district. Bishop McLaughlin, Cambridge Christian, and Zephyrhills Christian all opted out of the state series and was announced all on the same just recently by the SSAA on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, that they would be joining the SSAA 11-Man Division.

That situation left Carrollwood Day as the only team and as such the FHSAA moved them over to Class 1A-District 7 with Lakeland Christian and Victory Christian (Lakeland) to form a three-team district. However, it could have been a four-team district, but shock waves were felt around Polk County when it was announced that Frostproof which was tentatively assigned to the district was dropping out of the state series to head to the SSAA Atlantic League despite having been an FHSAA playoff team over the last couple of years.

Now with the move of Carrollwood Day to District 7 out of the way, what was going to happen District 8? That leads us to the next part…

Two-team districts still lurking around, and people are not happy

If the annoyance of three-team districts bothered a lot of people, the fact that there are multiple two-team districts now with the final assignments has drew the ire of fans, coaches and media members alike.

One two-team district which came about due the situation we mentioned above about Class 1A-District 8 is the fact that Clearwater Central Catholic and Indian Rocks Christian (Largo) were slated to be in Class 1A-District 9 were moved to create the new District 8. That move leaves Clearwater Central Catholic and Indian Rocks Christian both searching for nine games. While the task might be easier for Indian Rocks Christian, with Clearwater Central Catholic coming off back-to-back state runner-up finishes, the Marauders could find it very difficult to complete a full schedule for the next two seasons after being in a four-team district in Class 1M the last two years.

Another glaring two-team district example is the district involving Cocoa and Astronaut (Titusville) over in Class 2A-District 6 where the tentative district was to include those two teams along with Umatilla, South Sumter (Bushnell) and The Villages. However, that was all for not as Umatilla announced quickly, they were leaving for the SSAA Atlantic League while both South Sumter and The Villages appealed their placement due to geographic isolation and won their appeal to be moved up to Class 3A-District 5.

For Astronaut they should not struggle with finding nine game to fill a schedule for the next two seasons, but Cocoa coaches have already been very vocal about the two-team district given the fact that the Tigers had a four-team district last year and now instead of having at least three guaranteed games, they will have to schedule nine games and finding nine games after winning back-to-back state championships could be a very daunting and difficult task ahead.

Number of larger districts few and far between

When analyzing the districts and the number of schools placed in each district, we found very quickly that most districts of the four-team variation, meaning how many districts had more than four schools in the district.

Here is a breakdown of just how many districts exist in each classification that have five teams or more (hint there is only one six-team district in the entire state series for 2024 and 2025):

Class 7A: 3
Class 6A: 3
Class 5A: 2
Class 4A: 3
Class 3A: 4
Class 2A: 2 – including the only six-team district
Class 1A: 2

As you can see, the number of larger districts stands at 19 of 128 districts assigned by the FHSAA for the next two years and thus brings out more frustration among the coaches who were calling for larger districts of at least five to six teams to make scheduling decisions easier.

Stay tuned for more reclassification coverage and breakdown

Stay tuned to FloridaHSFoootball.com for more coverage and breakdowns of the 2024 and 2025 FHSAA reclassification. We will have different angles and perspectives as we will look at the new districts and assignments over the coming days and weeks.