History doesn’t always repeat itself.

But one thing remains pretty consistent in regards to the makeup of the teams that qualify for the IHSA playoffs: teams that qualify for the playoffs, tend to repeat the process more often than not.

Certainly there are always a few new teams that would break into the field on a year-to-year basis, but the percentages have always been fairly stable and you could almost always count on about an 80% return rate from year-to-year.

In fact, there were several seasons where that percentage pushed 85%.

But in the gap between the 2021 and 2022 seasons there was a crack in that facade, for the first time since the field expanded to 256 teams, as that percentage dipped below 75% at 73.82%.

Now, that level seems to be more of the norm as 73.4% of the field w

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