Allatoona Rises to Class AAAAA

is moving up in the high school sports world.

The Buccaneers will jump next school year from AAA to AAAAA under the Georgia High School Association’s new , unveiled Monday afternoon.

Allatoona, which plays in the , is the biggest school in its current region, 7-AAA. Next year, it could be the biggest school in the 71-team Class AAAAA.

The GHSA grouped the schools based on their self-reported enrollments this year from ninth to 11th grade. Based on those numbers, Allatoona and are the biggest schools assigned to AAAAA with 1,426 students each.

The biggest classification under the new setup, AAAAAA, has 65 schools, including and most of the rest of the public high schools in Cobb County. If AAAAAA had as many teams as AAAAA and AAAA, 71 each, Allatoona would have been one of the smallest teams in its class instead of the biggest.

That’s an outcome Allatoona wanted to avoid, the Marietta Daily Journal reported.

Now, instead of being in a region with the likes of North Cobb, and , the Buccaneers will find themselves with seven or eight schools from a group including , , and in Cobb; the five Paulding County public schools; in Bartow; and in Cherokee; and Rome in Floyd.

Meanwhile, the reclassification shouldn’t change much for Harrison, North Cobb and .

Harrison and North Cobb will remain in the state’s top class, just with an extra A, and North Cobb Christian will remain in the private-school-heavy Class A with 96 other schools.

The only possible change is a slight shuffling of regions in AAAAAA. With 65 teams, the class will need seven eight-team regions and one nine-team region.

Most likely, will join what is now Region 4-AAAAA when the Tigers enter AAAAAA next year, and one Cobb school could move from that region to what is now 5-AAAAA, which has only seven teams. Geographically, the most likely candidates are North Cobb and Kennesaw Mountain.

The GHSA will announce the proposed regions Dec. 6, the day after the deadline for schools to ask to compete in a higher class than their enrollment dictates.

The attached PDF file shows all six classifications, including each school’s current or projected enrollment of ninth- to 11th-graders. There are 65 schools in AAAAAA, 71 each in AAAAA and AAAA, 70 in AAA, 66 in AA and 97 in A, although only 71 of the A schools play football.

You can read more about the reclassification from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Score Atlanta.