Private school scholarships and wealth tilt the playing field

   Whether or not you believe the playing field is tilted toward private schools in the Oklahoma Secondary Schools Activities Association (OSSAA) when competing with public schools, the evidence and subsequent statistical analyses indicate  that private schools have systemic and unfair advantages when competing with public schools. We've already provided data and analysis of sports such as football, basketball, and volleyball in the OSSAA, but Boys Tennis should also be scrutinized and analyzed to ascertain and illuminate any unfair advantages.
    My good friend Phil Barnes, the Tennis coach in Duncan, suggested we take a look at the sport. These are the facts:
   Rule 14 in the OSSAA Handbook advances private schools up one enrollment based class level when specific success conditions are met. Many private schools in the OSSAA have been playing in a class level above where there enrollment would indicate since 2012. The only caveat to Rule 14 is that no private school will be forced to play in class 6A for any sport, even if all success indicators are met. There are currently 32 class 5A Boys Tennis teams in the OSSAA - 25 public and 7 private. The 2017 Boys State Tennis Championships resulted in Heritage Hall as the class 5A State Champion and six of the top eight finishers being private. If all factors were equal regarding a level playing field, one would expect the percentage of public schools finishing in the top eight to roughly equal the percentage of public schools participating in 5A Tennis. The participation percentage for public schools is 78%, but placing in the top eight is only 25%. The participation percentage for private schools in 5A Tennis is 21.8%, while the "success" ratio is 75%. This one analysis indicates that private schools in the OSSAA enjoy systemic advantages which heavily "tilts the playing field" towards the privates.
   The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) realized long ago that universities which offered scholarships to athletes and were relatively wealthy as far as athletic facilities, had advantages over colleges which offered no scholarships. The NCAA, subsequent to this realization, divided university athletics into classifications based on provided "student financial assistance". Division I schools may offer "scholarships" to students - Division III schools do not offer student financial assistance in the form of athletic scholarships. We believe this factor, which is controlled by private schools in the OSSAA, is the overriding measurable indicator of "the private school advantage", and must be controlled by the OSSAA.