By Tom Nader

Publisher and Editor

In July, the Ohio High School Athletic Association announced it was changing its playoffs scheduling format.

In 2022, the first two rounds were played on Friday nights and the next three rounds were split between Friday (Divisions I, II, III and V) and Saturday (Divisions IV, VI and VII).

This season, however, all of the playoff games will be played on Fridays all the way through the state semifinals.

With the change and questions swirling throughout the communities, I wanted to offer OHSAA Director of Media Relations Tim Stried a platform to provide perspective on the changes.

Stried has been with the OHSAA since 2008.

Here is the Q&A Stried had with Portage Sports.

• Q: What was the primary decision behind moving all of the games to Friday instead of splitting between Friday and Saturday?

     STRIED: During the off-season, the football coaches asked if it was possible to play all playoff games on Friday night. Schools are used to playing on Friday nights and they want to play on Friday night. Saturday is a college football day, both in terms of fans consuming football and also high school upper classmen making college visits.

• Q: With the ongoing, and publicly acknowledged, referee shortage, how does this impact the officials and their availability?

STRIED: This was the biggest factor. If we didn’t have enough officials to do this, we wouldn’t put all the games on Friday nights. As long as we have enough, we’ll want to put all the games on Friday nights. If we get to the point where we don’t have enough officials, then we’ll need to go back to having games on Friday and Saturday.

• Q: For media coverage, this impacts how many games can get covered. What is the OHSAA’s viewpoint on less coverage of the games and student-athletes?

STRIED: You are correct that this reduces the amount of coverage. In my role as media relations director, I am sensitive to that fact, but the request from the coaches outweighed everything, as long we have enough officials.

• Q: For fans that historically would attend games on both nights, what are the thoughts from the OHSAA on reducing the fan experience? Fewer tickets sold?

STRIED: You are also correct that fans can only pick one game per weekend to attend, but the number of fans attending two games per weekend has been shrinking for some time. The attendance numbers of Saturday games has proven that.

• Q: What benefits outweighed the negatives in regards to the change?

STRIED: The benefit is that we were able to say yes to the coaches request. As long as we have enough officials, we can say yes to this request from the coaches. There are negatives but being able to say to the coaches for this request was very important.