Adam72993

Cortez High School

Hi! My name is Raymie. I edit articles on Arizona schools.

I want to explain an edit to the article Cortez High School, which you recently edited. You wrote "Division 3" as the Arizona Interscholastic Association conference alignment. This is confusing because of the recently-introduced and complicated system of AIA alignment.

• Alignments for sports describe playoff eligibility and team size (and, for football, 11-man or 8-man). These are known as divisions and sections. They are not always consistent for a single school across all sports. Example: Seton Catholic Preparatory High School competes in Division I boys' volleyball, Division II basketball, Division III girls' volleyball and Division IV football, among other sports. Because these can take into account schools' appeals (Seton appealed up from Division III to Division II in basketball), season of sport (fall soccer is Division IV while winter soccer is Divisions I-III), and the amount of divisions per sport (boys' volleyball has one division, many sports have four, and football has six), these are not recommended for use in articles.

• Alignments for AIA use describe enrollment and are used inside the AIA. These are known as conferences (1A through 5A) and regions. Since the introduction of divisions and sections, these are no longer used in sports, and regions are merely committees of athletic directors. Conference alignment is almost never affected by factors such as number of divisions, season of sport and competitive equity and is based on enrollment and appeals alone. Regions do not line up to sections, and conferences are not comparable to divisions.

For a reference of where schools are and in what conference, the AIA has a good resource in its Conference Region Alignment page on their website. Also selecting the school in the Member School Directory on the AIA site will yield not only a conference-region breakdown but division and section by sport breakdown. Raymie (t • c) 16:47, 6 January 2013 (UTC)