In your particular state, how do they mix public school & Catholic school sports? For example, here in Illinois there are eight divisions for high school football (1A through 8A). Depending on the size of your high school and the town, your team in placed in a division. The larger the pool of kids, the higher in the divisions your team would be. For example, a typical 1A team is a high school of about 400 kids from a town 2,500 people. An 8A team would come from a HS of about 3,500 kids from a town of 75,000 people. Anyway, here in Illinois a coach from a public school isnt allowed to recruit kids from neighboring towns, even if the neighboring town doesnt have a football program. Hes only allowed to use the kids from his school district. However, private Catholic schools are allowed to recruit any kids they want. Obviously if a coach sees an outstanding 12 year old playing youth football a few towns away, he can tempt him to come play for his team instead of going to the local public school.
Because of this it comes as no surprise that division 3A through 6A were all won by Catholic schools (which win them year after year). The only reason they dont win the smaller or larger divisions is because the typical Catholic HS school isnt very small or very large. Anyway, I was wondering how other states handled this mix of schools.