WILSONVILLE — The Oregon School Activities Association’s rankings committee is scheduled to consider the possibility of adding a human voice to the state’s high school rankings during a closed-door meeting on Thursday, April 4.

Currently, a team’s ranking is based solely on a mix of computer programs that mostly examine wins and losses. A combination of the Rating Percentage Index and the Colley Rating, both generated by computers, determines if your team is better than the upcoming opponent.

High school athletics in Washington has added a human voice to the process. Washington added a committee of coaches, athletic directors, retired administrators and select media to a seeding committee in 2020 for all sports. This same system had been implemented two years earlier for football.

Washington made the change after a series of missteps in multiple sports showed a need for humans to have a voice in seedings.

Oregon hasn’t been immune to seeding misfires.

In this past season’s Oregon 1A 6-man football, for example, the championship game saw No. 10 Echo beat No. 4 Joseph by seven points. According to the computer, this game should have featured No. 1 Prairie City/Burnt River playing No. 2 Powers. But Prairie City/Burnt River fell in the semifinals to Joseph by 14 points, while Powers went out in the quarterfinals with a 28-point loss to Echo.

The 2A championship game saw third seed Lowell overwhelm top seed Weston-McEwen/Griswold by 32 points. Second seed Oakland fell to Lowell by 14 points in the semifinals.

In fact, the state title went to the top seed in just three of the seven championship games during the most recent playoffs.

In the recently completed basketball season, 3A champion Cascade Christian entered the playoffs as the sixth seed even though numerous national rankings had placed the Challengers higher. The computer rankings docked the Challengers for regular season losses, even though many of the losses came against much larger schools. For example, during the Les Schwab Invitational, Cascade Christian was pitted against teams like 6A Central Catholic, the eventual 6A title team.

Cascade Christian was crowned 3A champions after a 19-point victory in the final over top-ranked Westside Christian.

Although the committee’s next meeting is closed to the public, OSAA is accepting public correspondence on the issue. Comments should be emailed to krisw@osaa.org.