GAINESVILLE — Riverside Military Academy picked up a huge victory in Macon on Wednesday -- not on the playing field but one that will give the Eagles a much better shot on the playing field for years to come.
Following a lengthy appeal from Riverside President Col. Jim Benson, the Georgia High School Association's Executive Committee voted to move the Eagles into Region 8-A for the upcoming reclassification cycle. The GHSA had originally proposed to jump Riverside -- currently in Class AA -- to Class AAAA where the Eagles would have competed in a region that included metro-Atlanta powers Blessed Trinity and Marist, along with Chestatee, West Hall and White County -- all of which feature significantly larger enrollments than Riverside.
Now the Eagles are slated to join Region 8-A, giving the league 12 teams -- 10 of which play football -- including Lakeview Academy, Commerce and Towns County, as well as Athens Academy, Athens Christian, George Walton, Hebron Christian, Prince Avenue Christian, Providence Christian Academy, Tallulah Falls School and Woody Gap.
"It is a pretty big deal," Riverside athletic director Marc Paglia said. "This gives some of our major sports the opportunity to make the playoffs. In Class AAAA we would have had a very tough time in several sports. Now we've got a fighting chance."
The Eagles' appeal was the only one approved on a day that the GHSA's Executive Committee ratified its Reclassification Committee's new alignment -- which will take effect for the 2016-17 school year and run for four years. The new regions -- including a new seventh and largest classification -- feature plenty of change for northeast Georgia schools from the current set-up, though perhaps none were as drastic as what Riverside faced until Wednesday's appeal.
"It's a credit to Col. Benson," said Paglia. "He went in front of the Executive Committee with a lot of stats and met with them several times during the day; he was worn out. But he did a great job."
Riverside features 429 students -- 96.6 percent of the school's enrollment -- from out of its district, which, along with being a single-sex school, was what led the GHSA to push it all the way into Class AAAA when new region alignments were released in December.
"We're a boarding school, and we have so many international students that have never played the big American sports," Paglia said. "We've always done well at the individual sports, but a lot of our students have never played football or baseball till they get here. This will be much better for our program as far as retention of students too if they think we have a better chance at competing."
