Florida's state baseball semifinals and championship rounds will shift to best-of-three series starting in spring 2027, a format change that applies to every FHSAA program, including Don Soffer Aventura High and Scheck Hillel Community School.

The Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) board of directors voted 11-0 on Tuesday, Sept. 22, to scrap the single-elimination format that had governed state semifinal and final rounds for more than a decade, as first reported by the Orlando Sentinel.

The vote was unanimous.

State semifinals will now be played at the home field of the higher-seeded team. Only the two finalists in each classification, 1A through 6A and the Rural Division, will travel to Fort Myers for the championship series. Fort Myers has hosted both the semifinals and finals since 2013.

"I think this is a big win for the baseball community," FHSAA board member Trevor Berryhill said at the Sept. 22 meeting. "For every decision we make the goal should be to maximize student experience. This does that."

Berryhill, who also coaches baseball at The Master's Academy in Oviedo, spoke on behalf of the amendment. The FHSAA's baseball advisory coaches committee backed the change 8-0 before the board meeting. The athletic directors committee endorsed it 7-4, though some members raised concerns about added hotel costs and missed school days.

The format mirrors college and Major League Baseball postseason play, where series reward deeper rosters. A team that reaches the state semifinals could now play as many as six games in the final two rounds instead of two, placing greater demand on pitching staffs.

The FHSAA also approved a new Open Division tournament. The eight highest-ranked teams statewide will be pulled from their classifications after district play and placed into two four-team pools. Each pool-play round will be best-of-three, with the top two teams from each pool advancing to semifinal series. The semifinal winners will meet in Fort Myers for a best-of-three championship.

The shift caps a multi-year push. The FHSAA introduced best-of-three for all three regional rounds in 2024, then scaled back to single games for region quarterfinals in 2025 after complaints about travel costs. Regional semifinals and finals remained series. The association had also tried best-of-three region finals in 2008 and 2009 before dropping them over budget concerns.

One wrinkle: the FHSAA voted down a companion proposal in September 2024 that would have expanded the regular-season schedule limit from 25 to 28 games, according to Hoodline. Coaches had sought those extra games to build pitching depth for series play. Programs will navigate a longer postseason with the same regular-season game count.

Spring baseball season dates for Don Soffer Aventura and Scheck Hillel had not been published as of Sept. 26.