As the two year window of region placement approaches the end, the new region placements for Park City have been approved. After two years of driving over an hour to every region game (besides Wasatch) Park City has finally been placed in the desired region 6 with the other Salt Lake teams. 

Region 6 consists of Brighton, East, Highland, Murray, Olympus, Skyline, and now Park City. Two years ago, this was the region that Park City was working towards becoming a part of but instead got placed in a region with Wasatch and the Provo schools. This new change in region placement will be put into effect for the 2021-2023 sports seasons. 

Another major change is that football will now be joining the rest of the Park City sports in 5A competing against the same teams. In the past, football has remained a part of 4A while the rest of Park City sports moved up to 5A. Classifications are made based on the size of the school with 6A having the biggest schools and 1A having the smallest. After discussion, the Board of Trustees decided that Park City football was ready to move up. 

When asked about these changes across the board, Athletic Director Jamie Sheetz was excited for the high level of competition that the Miners have joined.

“Everybody that I talked to likes the competition,” said Sheetz, “This is good competition for us.”

More importantly, Sheetz recognized how the higher classification level allows for student-athletes to receive more recognition from college-level athletics.

“It’s going to be a great chance for exposure for all sports and for all of our student-athletes,” said Sheetz. 

After the first consideration, Park City was thought about being demoted back to 4A and becoming a part of the central region in 4A. This idea failed quickly as all 5 schools in the central region expressed their disapproval of the idea mainly because of the fact that the other two regions in 4A were teams from St. George and Cache Valley. 

As a result of these 5 teams not wanting to be a part of 4A, 5 different regions were made for 5A while only two remain in 4A. Sheetz sees this as an advantage describing 5A to be the most competitive class in Utah due to the number of teams.

There also is the possibility that this will be the last time that we see regions in Utah. As the Rating Power Index (RPI), continues to get developed, the need for regions declines. Playoffs would then be decided by the RPI and any school no matter the size could be indifferent state playoffs. 

“You may have 6A, 5A, and 4A schools playing for one state championship based on the strength of their RPI,” Sheetz explained. 

Although this potential change is in the future, it seems very likely that it will occur within the next cycle. 

Sheetz ended by stating, “I think that a lot of people believe that it is past time to move on from the region thing, and move to something a little bit more up to date with the times.”