Alberta High Schools

BOYS DIVISIONS

• Quad-A
• Triple-A
• Double-A
• Single-A
• Five-A

GIRLS DIVISIONS

• Quad-A
• Triple-A
• Double-A
• Single-A
• Five-A

When formally founded in 1956, the province was divided into 10 zones, Calgary; Edmonton: Northwest: Northeast; North Central; Central West; Central East; South Central; Southwest; and Southeast.

Prior to 1957, provincial high school championships were run by the Alberta Amateur Basketball Association.

In 1974 realignment, 4A becomes schools with more than 800 students.

In 1982-83, a zone realignment was undertaken, taking effect in 84-85. Thereafter, the title was decided by an eight-team tournament, with two teams from Calgary; two from Edmonton; two from the SC, SE and SW zone and one from the NW; NC and NE zones; and one from the CE and CW zones.

In Alberta, schools are allowed to opt up from their category of competition. Most opt-ups occur in the southwest zone.

        Schools of under 100 students are classified 1A, 100-299 are 2A, 300-799 are 3A and schools with student populations in excess of 800 are 4A.

In a realignment in 2025-26, School Sport Alberta (formerly ASAA) classified high school sports into five divisions (1A–5A) based on school enrollment size, moving away from the previous four-tier system to better accommodate diverse school populations. The updated divisions are 1A (<75) ; 2A (75-249), 3A (250-699), 4A (700-1399), and 5A (1400+).

Thanks to: former Archbishop Jordan coach Wayne Ashton for alerting me to the existence of ASAA yearbooks, which were instrumental in helping to fill out the rosters of many tournament participants. Notably, the yearbooks were occasionally inconsistent with newspaper accounts of tournaments, and even occasionally misidentified rosters. They also often presented conflicting information, from year to year, with regard to the spelling of the surnames of coaches and players.

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