An Overview of G. A High Schools Association

Georgia High Schools Association or G A High Schools Association is an organization that governs the sports events for member high schools in the state of Georgia in United States. It is also a member of the National Federation of the Associations of high schools in the state.

What the Association Does

The association performs the following tasks.
It organizes all the sports and academic competitions.
It also oversees the registration of the associations.
The association also evaluates officials for the member events.

Membership to Association

Membership to the GHSA features is as follows.
Membership is purely voluntary.
It is open to every high school in the state of Georgia.
Concerned school must have at least 150 students enrolled under its wings.
Despite not entering the association, many private schools of the GHSA compete in the interscholastic organization of Georgia Independent Schools Association.
Decisions are taken by the member schools through appointment of state representatives voting on the proposals in GHSA Executive Committee.
Individual decisions that are region based are made on issues like tiebreakers and hosting tournaments.
Members are divided into five classes by size and are subdivided into region that is based on graphic locations.

Classification Patterns

Currently GHSA has five classes in all. These classes are based on the numbers of the capital A. These are called as –
AAAAA or five A.
AAAA or Quad A.
AAA or Triple A.
AA or Double A.
A or Single A.

Again each of the classes has eight regions those are numbered as 1 through 8. Such regions are decided on the basis of geographical location of the schools. Usually the region 1 is constituted with the southernmost schools. Numbers increase in ascending order as one move towards the north.

Change in Alignments

Regions were hitherto realigned every second year but from 2010 it has been made a four yearly affair. Again; the regions usually had ten schools though the range could vary from 4 to 16 depending on the area and number of schools.

Normally the schools having enrollment strength of 1850 or above will be considered as AAAAA class while 525 or above will qualify for ‘A’ class.