The Indiana High School Athletic Association announced on Monday the new classifications for member schools in the sports of basketball, football, soccer and volleyball for the next two school years.

Seymour remained in Class 5A in football and Class 4A in its other sports, while Trinity Lutheran, Medora and Crothersville all stayed in Class A.

Brownstown Central, however, is being moved from Class 3A to Class 2A in all of those sports.

The IHSAA determines this based on enrollment. Every school sends in its enrollment from the fall, and the IHSAA uses those same numbers to put everyone in order from the biggest school to the smallest school and divide them up into four classes.

Athletic Director Mark DeHart said Brownstown has always been on the borderline between 3A and 2A, and with an enrollment of 488 this year, the Braves slid back into 2A.

“I know I’ve spoken to our coaches and some of our community members, and they seem to be excited to get back down to 2A,” DeHart said. “Success-wise, I think it’s better to be at the top of the class instead of the bottom of the class. We get the opportunity to be one of the bigger schools in Class 2A.”

The Braves will remain in the Mid-Southern Conference, but their sectionals will get realigned, and those are set to be released in May.

“That’s kind of a neat thing, too,” DeHart said. “We were put into a Class 3A sectional that was a pretty good distance away. Most of the schools weren’t on our regular season schedule. We didn’t have a lot of rivalry, we didn’t know a lot about those schools and they didn’t know a lot about us. Hopefully, we’ll get put into a class against schools that we do compete against and that maybe we can relate to a little bit better and maybe they’ll be closer to home.”

DeHart used the girls basketball sectional as an example just this past February. The Braves had to make three trips to Northview to win a sectional championship, and it was two-hour drive each way, and due to weather complications, those trips all happened on school nights, as well.

Brownstown hopes to obtain some more postseason success being back in 2A. Just this past year, the Braves had a good amount of success in 3A, though.

Both boys and girls basketball and volleyball all won sectional titles this school year, and the football team reached the sectional championship.

In 2019, the Braves volleyball squad won the state championship. DeHart hopes there can be more deep runs like that in the postseason in the upcoming future.

“We were still able to win some sectionals, but making long runs in that 3A was really tough,” he said. “Just hoping that we can continue that sectional success and that we can maybe have some teams advance a little further in the tournament.”

These recent IHSAA classifications won’t affect spring sports right now, though. The IHSAA noted that softball and baseball sectional groupings will be released in August following the committee’s first meeting of the new school year.

DeHart hopes those two sports get placed in 2A, as well.

“Then we’ll all have new sectionals next year with 2A schools,” he said.