Another way of looking at it from the numbers perspective is that if you are referring to the same 18 member committee that smokey mentioned in his post above, where 14 were public and 4 private that means 78% were public and only 22% private. Now that is probably more than fair to the private schools based on their actual percentage in the membership, but in a straight up or down vote the private schools will not have much of a chance in succeeding.

Greg, did the committee take into consideration special situations where you have exceptional long term coaches like Gwen Pike, volleyball at Bishop Miege and Terry English girls basketball at Bishop Miege? I think you have to because good coaching and program development due to good coaching is a factor that I think that some people do not want to acknowledge enough and tend to dismiss. The parents of athletes though realize for sure the value of that coaching and that is true whether it is public or private schools. Why is Miege so dominant in girls volleyball and basketball in comparison even to other private schools in the area over the last thirty years? Is it not because of Terry English and Gwen Pike? Why is Bishop Ward such a dominant baseball team even over other area private schools over the last several years? How much of a factor is their excellent coach Dennis Hurla in that success? How big of a factor is Craig Ewing's excellent coaching in the Aquinas soccer team's success in their boys and girls teams success? It seems to me that the easy explanation for the public school interests is that the disparity is being caused primarily due to the private school's ability to enroll students from a broader area but it fails to adequately recognize the amount of students that private schools lose to public schools due to tuition and other financial factors, good coaching, and a possible difference of committment from the athletes themselves.

By the way Contrarion, Aquinas was 6A for a few years and has great soccer success at both 6A and 5A in that period. I am pretty sure that all the 6A soccer teams would like for them to stay at 5A. Here is their state championship track record:

2003 6A 1st
2004 6A 1st
2005 5A 1st
2006 6A 1st
2007 5A 1st
2008 5A 1st
2009 5A 1st Also ranked as the No.1 team in Nation in final poll

So you can see they varied between 6A and 5A but once St. James was established they landed in 5A in 2007 and have stayed there since then.