Let’s talk a little bit about the prep sports leagues in the U.S. and how they play in the world of PrepSportFantasy.com. Aside from having all kinds of crazy names (really, Empire League in Orange County…Empire of Sun-in??) across the country, the 100’s of athletic leagues are important and we need to take a look at them.

Players all know what league their school is in but a lot of fans probably don’t. Usually, a high school athletic league is based on schools in a certain geographic reason. Sometimes, they are real close while in rural areas, they may be pretty spread out. There are different levels for prep sport leagues. The levels are generally based on size of schools and how strong the athletic programs of each school are. The point is to match similarly skilled teams against each other. Having a school with 2000 students play one with 500 students, even if it’s right next door, doesn’t make any sense since the smaller school will likely be at a big disadvantage.

This is why you usually have divisions for Prep Sports. Typically, they run something like this. 1A is the toughest level usually reserved for bigger schools or schools with a history of dominant athletic programs. There might be a division 1B below this but barely. Next down the scale will be division 2 and so on. Finally, you may get to 8 man football leagues for smaller schools who have difficulty coming up with a full 11 person roster. Some leagues are also built around certain kinds of schools such as leagues that have college prep schools exclusively or religious based schools in their leagues but the vast majority or geographic based and loosely built around similarly sized and competitively equal schools.

Many leagues for the same for all sports meaning that basketball and football will have the same league. This obviously doesn’t apply to 8-man football as it’s specific to that one sport. Schools in more populated areas will often play schools outside their leagues during the course of the season but usually, only games against high school teams within their own leagues count towards their league standings. This plays into the league playoffs. So what does all this have to do with Prep Sport fantasy leagues?

The high school athletic leagues determine which players you are allowed to choose from to fill your Fantasy League roster. You’re allowed to have up to 8 league owners in a fantasy league. Each owner can typically choose up to 8 players so we need 64 players for a given sport.