The Illinois High School Association’s classification system exists for a simple reason: fairness. By grouping schools based on enrollment, the IHSA aims to ensure that small rural schools compete against programs with similar limitations instead of being overwhelmed by larger institutions.
But when Chicago Marshall High School lined up against Goreville in the Class 1A state championship game, it exposed a glaring flaw in that system.
On paper, Marshall qualifies as a Class 1A school. Its official enrollment is now small enough to place it among the smallest programs in Illinois. But anyone who looks beyond the numbers understands that Marshall is not remotely comparable to a school like Goreville.
Goreville High School is exactly the type of community Class 1A was designed for. The school has roughly 165 students and sits in a town of about 1,164 people. Its athletes come from a tiny, fixed local population. When Goreville fields a team, it is drawing from the students who happen to grow up in that small community.
If a graduating class lacks size or speed, there is no alternative pipeline. That is simply the reality of small-town sports.
Marshall operates in a completely different environment. It sits in the middle of Chicago, a city of nearly three million people. Chicago Public Schools (CPS) do not function like traditional rural districts with strict attendance boundaries. Students have the ability to attend schools outside their immediate neighborhood, meaning a school’s official enrollment does not necessarily reflect the size of the broader population from which it can draw.
Marshall’s own history illustrates the unusual nature of its presence in Class 1A.
The last time the school reached the IHSA state championship before this year was in 2008—when Marshall competed in Class 3A and defeated Chicago Simeon to win the state title. Less than two decades later, the same program is now competing for a Class 1A championship against a rural school with barely 165 students.
What changed?
Marshall’s enrollment has declined dramatically. Since 2003, the school has lost roughly 900 students as Chicago Public Schools has shrunk and the Chicago Teachers Union has blocked the closing of any schools. That drop in enrollment is real, and it explains why Marshall now qualifies numerically for the smallest IHSA class.
But enrollment numbers alone do not tell the whole story.
Even after losing hundreds of students, Marshall remains located in the middle of one of the largest cities in the United States. Its athletes are not limited to a small rural population the way Goreville’s are. The potential pool of talent surrounding a Chicago school is simply incomparable to that of a town with barely a thousand residents.
The IHSA’s classification system was never meant to compare schools like these.
The issue isn’t Marshall’s players or coaches. They followed the rules and earned their place on the court. The problem lies with rules that treat vastly different environments as if they were the same.
The IHSA has recognized similar competitive imbalances before. Private schools face an enrollment multiplier because they can draw students from wider geographic areas.
The same logic should apply here.
If a school’s effective recruiting base extends across a major metropolitan area, it should not be competing in the smallest classification against towns that barely have enough students to field a roster.
The solution is simple: Chicago public schools with open enrollment should not be eligible for the lowest IHSA classifications, regardless of their official enrollment numbers.
Class 1A should be reserved for programs that are truly small—not just small on paper.
Otherwise, the IHSA’s classification system risks becoming a technicality rather than the fairness mechanism it was meant to be.
