It’s hard to believe that the high school football season is at its halfway point already, but here we are.

Representatives from District 11 gathered at the St. Luke’s Sportsplex Tuesday to announce the plans for this year’s district playoffs throughout the 2024-2025 school year, and to put some dates and guidelines in place for the postseason.

The top four teams in Classes 1A, 3A, and 5A will qualify for the district playoffs, while classes 2A, 4A, and 6A will have eight teams qualify. All of the qualifiers will be determined by the district power rankings, which uses a weighted formula taking the strength of schedule into consideration.

Only the 1A classification will have a sub-regional with District 2. The two districts have a total of six teams, and four will qualify for district playoffs. Should two schools from each district qualify, the seedings would be tossed out, and the two teams from District 2 and the two teams from District 11 would play in the semifinals, with the winner of each game being crowned the district champion for their respective district.

The two winning teams would then meet in the district finals to determine which team would go on to play in states.

District playoff games will take place on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays to compensate for a lack of officials, and to provide for more coverage from cable companies.

“We’ve put a lot of work and effort into recruiting officials and it’s getting better, but we’re still short,” said Northwestern Lehigh Athletic Director Jason Zimmerman, who serves as the District 11 football chair. “We also have to consider the experience of the officials. We don’t want to take someone who is new to officiating and put them into a district final game; that just wouldn’t be fair to them or to the teams. Using all three days just makes things easier.”

For football, quarterfinal and semifinal games will be hosted by the team with the higher seed based on the power rankings, but district finals will be played at a neutral site, allowing district officials to use the best venues for each particular event.

“It’s gone over well, and having the district finals at a neutral site allows us to use the best facilities for the biggest games,” said Zimmerman. “The local school districts have all been very cooperative and have done an awesome job being a good host. It also gives them the opportunity to showcase their facilities for some fans who might not normally go to games there.”

The classifications that have eight qualifiers all have at least 10 teams in the class, allowing for more schools to qualify. Zimmerman noted that can change from year to year, and is not determined only by the local numbers.

“You have to look statewide to see how many each district has. One district may have eight teams, and another has nine. That other district gets the extra qualifiers,” noted Zimmerman.

The number of qualifiers can cause some confusion about how and why some teams get into districts and others don’t. In District 11, there are only four teams – East Stroudsburg South, Pleasant Valley, Pocono Mountain East, and Whitehall - in the 5A classification.

Currently, only East Stroudsburg South (4-1) has a winning record. The other three teams have a combined one win among them, but all four teams will qualify for districts.

The 3A classification in District 11 has nine teams, but gets just four qualifiers instead of eight. Currently, Saucon Valley (4-1) and Salisbury (3-2) would not qualify for the postseason even though they are likely to finish with a winning record.

Tamaqua (5-0) and Northwestern (5-0) are currently first and second in District 11’s Class 3A power ratings.

In Class 4A, Lehighton (2-3) and Jim Thorpe (1-4) currently occupy the last two spots in seventh and eighth.

The district playoff brackets will be announced on Oct. 29.