Virginia Secondary Schools Activities Commission

West Virginia Secondary Schools Activities Commission or the WVSSAC is also referred in some quarters simply as SSAC is the governing body of high school activities in West Virginia.

Controlling Authority of SSAC

Usually WYSSAC has the following activities to control in respect of the schools in West Virginia.
It is the main governing body for high schools sports in West Virginia.
The commission also controls the cheerleading and marching bands of the West Virginia.
Schools have been categorized into three classes on the basis of their overall enrollment.

Classification of Schools

Classification of the Virginia secondary schools is made in the following manner.
Classification is made on the basis of the enrollment in grades 9-11 only.
Student enrollment in the range of 0-337 earns the class ‘A’.
Such enrollments in the range of 340-618 get the school the classification of ‘AA’.
If the school has more than 619 students enrolled, then it would be classified as ‘AAA’.

Sports Break Up

Commission does not stop at classifying the schools alone but the sports events are classified as well. Following is the classification of the sports events.
Games like football, track, softball, baseball, basketball, golf, and volleyball are broken in to ‘A’, ‘AA’, and ‘AAA’ classes.
Games such as the wrestling, tennis, and cross country are classified into two types, namely ‘AAA’ and ‘AA/A’.
Swimming has only one class.

How It All Started

It all started with a championship tournament in basketball held in 1914. But not until 1979 were the private schools taken into the ambits of the commission. In that year the Commission merged with the state Catholic League. Currently it not only includes private schools but allows multiple schools with various viewpoints. As it is all the public schools are included in the process.

Unique Features

One of the aspects of the WVSSAC that makes it stand out in the crowd of the governing bodies of schools of West Virginia is that it never dictates individual schedules of the high schools during regular seasons and allows those decisions to be taken by the coaches involved. However, it determines the schedules during the playoffs.

An example is the game of football that is played on statewide basis. Every game is played in the venue nearest to the higher seeded school.