Small Town Oklahoma High School Basketball

One of my favorite hobbies is following high school basketball from my home state of Oklahoma. As I live in Illinois it is difficult for me to see many of these games but I am able to follow the results and details of games via many web resources. I am especially interested in the smallest classes of schools (Class A and Class B) as I graduated and played basketball at one of these small schools.

Oklahoma has many many small schools as the state has not done near as much consolidation of small high schools as many other states have done. There are 483 high schools listed in the OSSAA (Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association) handbook for 2008-2009. The smallest 131 schools are in Class B. These schools range in size from 24 to 4 students per high school grade. The next larger 96 schools make up Class A. These schools range in size from 40 to 24 students per high school grade.

Following basketball from small towns all across the state of Oklahoma is a way for me to stay connected to the state as the 227 smallest schools span the 4 corners of the state as well as every county in between. This also allows me to stay connected to a sport that I love at the small high school level where it really is played for the love of the game.

Practice for the 2008-2009 high school basketball season for these small schools started this week (Oct 1). The season will culminate with the Class A and Class B State Championships in Oklahoma City on March 5-7, 2009. I have been fortunate to go to the State tournament 3 of the last 4 years (one year I went a couple weeks early and saw some earlier games in this tournament due to some family needs) and I am planning to attend this coming spring.

The funny thing is that the title of this blog is "Small Town ..." yet many of these smallest schools are rural school districts that are not even big enough to be considered a town. They are often just school districts that exist outside of towns that may have a larger school. However, this doesn't in any way take away the appeal of these hundreds of small schools competing in basketball. In many ways basketball is what puts some of these schools on the map.