High school baseball, softball and soccer teams across South Alabama will see a significant change to their postseason path starting next school year, after the Alabama High School Athletic Association’s Central Board of Control voted to move all three sports from area-based playoffs to a regional format. The decision reworks one of the most familiar structures in state athletics: for decades, the road to a state title in those sports has run through area tournaments, where a single bad afternoon could end a season. Under the new setup, the regular season itself will matter more, and more teams will have something to play for deep into the spring.
Under the current setup, teams compete in area tournaments, with only the top two finishers in each area advancing to the next round of the playoffs. That structure rewards teams that peak at the right moment but punishes those that stumble early in a tournament, no matter how strong their body of work across the season. Beginning next season, the top four teams in regional standings will qualify for postseason play instead, a shift that will send more teams into the playoff bracket and change how coaches approach scheduling and seeding down the stretch of the regular season. Every region game will now carry postseason weight, and a strong regular season can no longer be wiped out by one off night in a single-elimination tournament.
The change is expected to affect dozens of programs in Mobile, Baldwin and the surrounding counties that compete in AHSAA-sanctioned baseball, softball and soccer. The Gulf Coast region produces some of the state’s deepest talent in all three sports, and local athletic directors have long complained that the area format forced quality teams out of the postseason too early. More playoff spots means more games, longer seasons for qualifying teams and a longer road to reach a state championship — a trade-off that most coaches in the affected sports have welcomed even as they rework their schedules.
A new member joins from the AISA
The board also approved the addition of a new member school to the AHSAA. Pike Liberal Arts School, a Troy institution that has competed in the Alabama Independent School Association, will join the AHSAA next school year and will be eligible to compete for state championships in every sport except football. The move follows a broader pattern of private schools shifting between the state’s two athletic governing bodies, and it gives Pike Liberal Arts athletes the chance to compete for AHSAA blue maps in the sports they play year-round.
Because of the timing of the school’s membership, its football program will not be eligible for a state title until the 2024-25 school year. The waiting period reflects AHSAA rules designed to keep programs from joining and immediately competing for championships, and it means Pike Liberal Arts football will spend its early seasons as a full member playing a complete schedule without postseason eligibility. The baseball program will make the leap with a ready-made reputation: Pike Liberal Arts has fielded one of the top-ranked baseball programs in AISA competition in recent seasons, and its arrival adds a new competitor to whichever classification the AHSAA ultimately assigns the school based on enrollment. Coaches in that classification will be studying their schedules closely once the assignments come out.
Membership changes of this kind ripple outward. Every school added to a classification shifts the competitive balance of its region in every sport, adjusts travel schedules for opponents and can change playoff seeding races a year in advance. Athletic directors across the affected region will spend the coming months reworking schedules to account for the new member and the new regional format arriving at the same time.
Football, bowling and summer rules
Several other rule changes were approved during the same meeting. In football, the board adopted a National Federation of State High School Associations recommendation to widen the team boxes along the sidelines, extending them from the 20-yard line to the 20-yard line rather than from 25-yard line to 25-yard line as they were last season, giving coaching staffs and players more room to operate during games. The wider boxes create more space for substitutes, assistants and equipment along the sideline, a change the national federation adopted with player safety and coaching logistics in mind. Fans in the stands will notice the difference immediately in how coaches and players are arrayed from the twenties in.
Bowling programs will also see a format change. Regular-season matches will now consist of one traditional round along with three Baker-format matches, replacing last season’s best-of-seven Baker match structure. The traditional round gives each team’s individual bowlers a full game of their own frames, while the Baker format — in which teammates alternate frames on a single combined score — emphasizes depth and cohesion over one or two standout players. The hybrid structure rewards programs with balanced rosters and gives matches a more varied rhythm than the previous all-Baker format did.
The Legislative Council additionally passed a change to the AHSAA’s summer practice rules, striking the requirement that college or university camps attended outside the standard three-week practice window be located in-state. Under the revised rule, a school team may still participate in up to two total days at a college or university camp beyond the allowable three weeks, but those camps are no longer restricted to Alabama schools. The practical effect is that Gulf Coast teams can attend summer camps at out-of-state programs that were previously off limits — opportunities that coaches say matter most in sports like football and basketball, where exposure camps hosted by college staffs double as recruiting showcases. The two-day cap remains in place, preserving the association’s interest in limiting summer commitments while loosening the geography.
For South Alabama programs, the summer rules change arrives at a convenient moment. The region’s proximity to campuses in Mississippi and Florida — and to major programs within driving distance along the Gulf Coast — means local teams can now build summer camp itineraries that were previously barred by the in-state requirement. Coaches will weigh the travel cost against the instruction and exposure, and the two-day limit will force them to choose their destinations carefully.
Basketball planning and what comes next
Board members also received an update on basketball postseason planning, including discussion of possible future regional tournament sites, though no final decisions were announced. Basketball regional sites are a perennial topic because the current arrangements require long trips for some programs and fill host venues unevenly, and any change would ripple through travel budgets and fan attendance across the state. The discussion signaled that basketball is next in line for the kind of format review that just reshaped baseball, softball and soccer, but administrators cautioned that nothing has been settled.
Taken together, the meeting’s actions amount to one of the more eventful agenda sessions the Central Board of Control has held in recent years: a postseason overhaul in three sports, a new member school arriving from the AISA, sideline changes in football, a restructured bowling season and loosened summer camp rules. Each change will take effect on its own timeline, with the regional format and Pike Liberal Arts membership arriving with the new school year and the football eligibility clock running toward 2024-25.
For athletes, coaches and families in Mobile and Baldwin counties, the practical takeaway is simple: more teams will play deeper into the postseason next year, and the regular season will count for more in every region race. Athletic departments are already adjusting schedules, and coaches across the three affected sports say they expect a higher level of competition from week to week now that four teams in each region — not two in each area — will punch a ticket to the playoffs. The state tournament races in baseball, softball and soccer should be broader, longer and harder to predict than they have been in years.
Regional standings will also change how ties and late-season games are handled. In the old area-tournament model, a season-long points race did not exist; seeding was settled over a few days in April. The standings-based format means coaches must manage pitching staffs, turf fields and travel weeks with the playoff bracket in view from the first region game, and a rainout in March now has to be made up because it could decide the fourth and final playoff spot. School systems that share stadiums and umpire associations across Mobile and Baldwin counties will feel the scheduling squeeze, and athletic directors say the trade-off is worth it: a format where more kids end their season on the field rather than watching from the stands.
The association will spend the year ahead monitoring how the new format performs. Standings tiebreakers, region alignment and host assignments for early playoff rounds are all details that will be refined once the first season under the regional model is complete, and board members indicated they expect adjustments based on what the schools report back. For now, the direction is clear: the postseason is expanding, and the teams of South Alabama will be playing for more, longer.