Villa Rica High School’s athletic teams are moving back to Class AAAA for the next two years beginning with the 2008 fall sports season. Unlike when the Wildcats made that jump four years ago, however, they aren’t making the move by their own will.

The Georgia High School Association announced its class assignments Friday and Villa Rica was assigned to Class AAAA for the 2008-09 and 2009-10 academic years. All other local teams remained in their current class.

The GHSA determines classification based on full-time enrollment numbers it receives from the Georgia Department of Education. Schools with more than 1,850 students are assigned to Class AAAAA and schools with fewer than 525 are assigned to Class A. All other schools are divided equally among AAAA, AAA and AA.

Villa Rica’s enrollment was listed as 1,432, which makes it one of the smaller schools at the Class AAAA level. Even so, Villa Rica co-athletic director and football coach Rob Cleveland said he wasn’t surprised about the school being bumped up to a higher classification.

Schools have until Nov. 26 to challenge their listed enrollment numbers, but Cleveland said Villa Rica doesn’t have anything to challenge and will move to Class AAAA.

“There may be one or two schools in the state of Georgia that the numbers are incorrect, but for the most part they have the numbers correct,” Cleveland said.

That date is also the deadline for schools to request to play at a higher classification. Villa Rica, along with Haralson County, did that four years ago and played the 2004-05 and 2005-06 seasons at the Class AAAA level even though the school’s enrollment numbers qualified it to play in Class AAA.

Cleveland said he would prefer to remain in Class AAA to keep Villa Rica’s rivalries with area teams like Carrollton, Central and Haralson County.

“I’d much rather play Triple-A football. It’s just more fun to play in that league because that’s where our natural rivals are,” Cleveland said. “If we had our choice, we would stay in 6-AAA, but that’s out of our control at this point.”

Region 6-AAA suffered not only the loss of Villa Rica, but also Cass and Sandy Creek, which will both move to AAAA.

Cleveland said he has talked to Haralson County coach Frank Vohun about trying to schedule a game early in the season if both teams have an open slot on their schedule. The Rebels and Wildcats have played each other every year in football since 1994.

Another long-standing football rival for Villa Rica is Carrollton. Cleveland said he has talked to Trojans coach Rayvan Teague and the worst case scenario is that the two Carroll County teams will play each other in a preseason jamboree.

As much as Cleveland wants to keep local rivalries alive, he said his first obligation if Villa Rica has any non-region slots will be to look for a Class AAAA game that he believes the Wildcats can be competitive in.

In many regions, including Region 6-AAA, overall winning percentage in a team’s classification is one of the playoff tie-breakers. The past two seasons, the Villa Rica football team hasn’t played a non-region game against a Class AAA school and in 2006 it missed the playoffs due to that tie-breaker.

“My first obligation is to get the Villa Rica kids in the playoffs,” Cleveland said.

As to what region Villa Rica will end up in, Cleveland said he sees two possibilities geographically. One would be an I-20 region that would group Villa Rica with the three Douglas County schools in AAAA (Alexander, Douglas County and Lithia Springs) along with some of the Paulding and Cobb County schools.

The other option would put Villa Rica with schools from northwest Georgia to balance the regions out.

All five teams in Region 6-A, where Bremen, Bowdon and Mt. Zion compete, stayed at the Class A level. Likewise, in sub-region 7A-AA, where Temple plays, all six teams remained in Class AA.

The GHSA reclassification committee will meet Nov. 29 to place schools into regions. Schools then have until Dec. 14 to appeal for a lateral transfer with appeals being heard three days later.

The executive committee will meet Jan. 10 to ratify the reclassification.