MECHANICSBURG — The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association took a vote Wednesday which will completely shake up Pennsylvania high school sports for the 2016-17 school year.

The PIAA Board of Directors, which has representatives from all 12 of the state’s districts, voted 26-4 to expand from four to six classifications in football.

They also voted 23-7 to expand basketball, baseball and softball from four to six classifications.

Boys and girls soccer, along with girls volleyball, will increase from three to four. Lacrosse will go away from the Division I/Division II system and have two classes sorted by size.

Districts 7 and 8, better known as the WPIAL and City League, respectively, were the only votes against expansion for football.

“Obviously, the vote speaks for itself,” said Mars athletic director and football coach Scott Heinauer, who was one of the three WPIAL representatives to vote no. “There’s not a whole lot anybody can do. ... We’re going to look for the good in it. It’ll be interesting to see where all the teams lie with basketball, softball and baseball being six classes.”

Enrollment figures for the next cycle, 2016-18, are due by the end of this month.

Once teams are placed into classifications, schools will have until late November to decide to play up.

Classes will be official by December and brackets will be constructed by January.

“I’ll be interested to see the further breakdown of what’s going to happen in terms of the WPIAL in terms of how we’ll be with football,” Butler Athletic Director Bill Mylan said. “I haven’t looked at numbers in basketball and baseball to see where we’re at. Until I see the breakdown, I can’t comment any further.”

Dividing football between six classes would mean either around 96 schools in each class, depending on if any schools chose to play up.

District 9 — which has 25 schools that play football — would have 15 schools in Class A, three in AA, AAA and Quad-A and one in 5-A.

Union football coach Dave Louder doesn’t think the Golden Knights will benefit much from the change. He was also disappointed the PIAA didn’t do anything with private, charter and Catholic schools.

“When I saw the preliminary results that came out this week from our athletic director, I didn’t think it would help us out much,” Louder said. “We have 84 boys in grades 10-12 and will be playing against schools double our size and we have bad luck for not having the male enrollment.”

Another football vote taken was 30-0 in favor of making the second football scrimmage, which is the week before the start of the regular season, a play date.

Heinauer said the WPIAL will likely determine if schools will play a game or have a second scrimmage.

“You can’t have Butler say yes, Seneca Valley say no, NA say yes,” Heinauer said. “It’s all or nothing. That’s going to come out when the WPIAL central scheduling makes that decision.”

Voting for expansion in sports other than football was a surprise move.

Protocol, which requires three votes on an issue, was suspended so the expansion could be voted in immediately.

A main point of contention for the WPIAL, which voted against expanding football along with District 8, was if football was expanded, the other sports would need to be as well.

“I think that was the basis. What’s the rationale behind that?,” said Mylan of the plan to originally only expand football. “I’d like to think we’re a pretty influential district and that we run a class act in District 7.”