MARTINS FERRY running back Trevor Hanson looks to break a tackle of a Linsly defender during last season’s game at Purple Rider Stadium. The Riders missed the playoffs last season, finishing ninth, but the OHSAA has announced its plan to expand the football tournament field in 2021 to include the top 12 finishers in each region.

There isn’t much — if anything — in high school sports that captivates a school or community like a deep run in the postseason.

The Ohio High School Athletic Association — with the urging of the Ohio High School Football Coaches Association — is giving four more schools in each region and 112 in the state a chance to experience it by expanding the football tournament, beginning in the 2021 season.

Currently, the top eight teams in each region qualify and the top four seeds earn a first-round home game.

In the new format, which was approved by the OHSAA’s Board of Directors unanimously, the top 12 in each region qualify with the top four seeds earning a bye to Week 12. The fifth through eighth seeds will now host a game in opening round and the top four seeds will host in the second round before neutral sites begin in the regional semifinals.

All told, 336 schools will extend their football seasons. According to the OHSAA, 709 schools sponsored 11-man football, so just under 50 percent of the schools will be participating in the postseason.

“I think it’s great for the kids,” Buckeye Trail head coach Donnie Kerns said. “This gives more kids the opportunity to play playoff football, and, at the end of the day, we have to do what’s best for the kids. I think the OHSAA has done that.”

The race to be in the top four will be important because should a team seeded five through 12 in a region advance to the state championship game, it would be playing in its 16th consecutive week, which not even NFL teams are asked to do.

One additional change to the current Ohio football format will involve the calendar. The season’s starting week will be moved up a week because the state championship games will still be contested during the first weekend in December.

If this format had been in place for the 2019 campaign, seven more OVAC teams would have qualified. Included are Martins Ferry, River, Buckeye Trail, Frontier, Conotton Valley, Cambridge and Meadowbrook.

The Purple Riders were playing some of their best football at the end of the season, but finished ninth in the region despite a win against Bellaire in Week 10.

Ferry won its final three games of the season to finish 6-4, but were eight tenths of a point out of the postseason.

“I was originally against (expanding the playoffs),” Ferry head coach Chas Yoder said. “After thinking about it, I think it’s a good thing because it gives more teams that previously would have been on the bubble an opportunity to make a run in the playoffs. It would have helped us last year. We struggled against some really good teams (early in the year), but in the second half of the season, I thought we were a playoff-caliber team.”

River, meanwhile, found itself on the bubble for the second straight season, waiting for the final scores of Week’s 10 Saturday schedule to trickle in before knowing its fate.

In the end, the Pilots finished 6-4 and finished ninth in the region.

“(The expansion) allows teams that play a competitive schedule throughout the season an opportunity to now make the playoffs,” River head coach Mike Flannery said. “I know several coaches don’t like the bye, but personally, I do. It rewards those top four teams and in small schools it helps with the injury protocol.”

Buckeye Trail would have been an 11-seed in Division VI, Region 21 in 2019 after finishing with a 7-3 record. Two of the three Warriors’ losses came to playoff opponents.

“I think the expansion takes a lot of pressure off the athletic directors because so many schools are driving two and three hours to avoid good teams 30 minutes down the road,” Kerns said. “Now, you can lose a couple and still make the playoffs.”