Tell your friend to check again. North Daviess is doing this very thing right now. It has been historically a 1A school. Its enrollment this year pushed it into class 2A - at the very bottom of the class with 286 students. ND opted to play boys' basketball in class 3A this year and next. You can challenge my knowledg on this, but you are going to find out I'm correct. Any school may opt to reclassify to a higher class in any sport. It just has to remain in that class until the next reclassification cycle ( currently 2 years). It's unusual, but it does happen. A few years ago there were some small Muncie-area public schools that opted to play up a class in volleyball to avoid a couple of private school powerhouses. I've never known of a private school that voluntarily moved up a class (and I don't blame them).
I am not talking about recruiting or transfers here, which is certainly not exclusive to private schools. I'm talking about "natural" enrollment classes based on potential pools of athletes. This is where the types of private schools I mentioned in the previous post ( large population areas, small student body mostly comprised of households with solid economic foundations) get a huge advantage in the class system. There are lots of parochial schools in smaller population communities ( think Washington Catholic) or schools in urban dioceses ( Scecina or Ritter HS in Indy) which are populated with lots of students with limited economic means or less-stable households, who are not necessarily at an advantage. It's not due to anything devious on the part of the schools, it's a huge flaw in the design of the class system in this state. The success factor offsets it to some degree, but not to the level it. needs to be addressed.
Let me provide you with one small example. There is a parochial school in the community where I teach. Its a 1A school located in a high population, high-income county. A family I know had a son and daughter who were outstanding athletes attending this school. Both received financial aid ( officially classified as "academic scholarships") in addition to state-supported vouchers. The family has a third child, a daughter with Downs' Syndrome. When the parents wanted to enroll her in the same private school, the school rejected her based on the reasoning that it could not reasonably accommodate her needs. So she attended the school where I teach, and counted in our enrollment for IHSAA classification purposes - even though she would never be able to participate in any sanctioned sport. At the time, we were one of the smallest schools in 4A, and we had dozens of students like this, in addition to those types of students I mentioned before. Yet, when I was actively coaching, our basketball sectional was comprised of us and five other schools with at least 400 more students than we had. Three of those schools had enrollment of more than 2000 students. The 1A school I mention, competed in a sectional with only public schools from rural areas or small-towns with enrollments of less than 250 kids, who had to take all students living in their district - regardless of their demographic.
So as you can understand, I take issue with the IHSAA's definition of fairness in the class setting. My apologies for the lengthy rant, but I want people to understand my disdain for the current system and the significant advantages it affords many private schools.