Florida high school baseball just traded its win-or-go-home state semifinals and finals for something closer to the pros: best-of-three series that will force every remaining team to lean on more than one arm to reach a championship. The Florida High School Athletic Association Board of Directors voted 11-0 to approve the change, meaning state semifinal and final rounds that were traditionally single-elimination games will now require teams to win two out of three to advance.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, state semifinal games will be played at the higher-ranked teams' home fields, and the finalists in each classification will then advance to Fort Myers, which has hosted state semifinals and championship games since 2013. The best-of-three format also applies to state championship series and pool play in the association's new Open Division.
The shift didn't happen in a vacuum. The Sentinel's report notes the FHSAA experimented with best-of-three regional finals back in 2008 and 2009 before abandoning the format because of school budgets, and the association only relaunched series baseball for all three regional rounds in 2024. Just a year later, the FHSAA returned regional quarterfinals to single games, while regional semifinals and finals remained best-of-three — a scaling-back the board approved 10-1 in June 2025 after logistics and travel costs prompted pushback following the one-year full-series trial, per the FHSAA's own recap carried by the Apopka Chief Newspaper.
Coaches Split on What Series Play Rewards
Matt Cleveland, who coached Spruce Creek and formerly coached Hagerty, led the effort to restore series play, per the Sentinel's reporting. The push found support on the FHSAA's Baseball Advisory Coaches Committee, which voted 8-0 to replace single-elimination play for the final four games, while the athletic directors committee endorsed the expansion by a narrower 7-4 vote.
Trevor Berryhill, a FHSAA board member and the Master's Academy baseball coach, called the format a big win for the baseball community and said the goal of every decision should be to maximize student experience, the Sentinel reported. Mike Sindone, who coached Hagerty to the 2026 regional title after extra-inning wins in games 2 and 3 at Spruce Creek, said a best-of-three series will identify the true state champion because it requires teams to use their first-, second- and third-best pitchers. Scott Hilinski, who coached Orangewood Christian to a Class 1A state runner-up finish last season, made a similar case, saying best-of-three play evaluates the overall team rather than one pitcher.
Not every reaction was pure enthusiasm. Sindone also voiced worry that road playoff runs could become expensive for lower-seeded teams, echoing the travel-cost concerns that pushed the FHSAA to scale back regional quarterfinals in the first place. Hilinski, for his part, said he's worried series play could increase pitcher workload and said he planned to reduce pitch counts earlier in the season to compensate, according to the Sentinel.
The Arm-Care Math Behind the Format
WUFT says pitchers aged 17 and 18 are capped at 105 pitches per game and are subject to a four-day rest requirement. Those limits already reshape how coaches build a postseason rotation, and violations can carry penalties.
Last season's regional trial suggests just how often series play pushes pitching staffs to their limits: 76 of 180 regional series, or 42%, went to a deciding third game in 2025, with Class 6A seeing the highest frequency of deciding games, according to Mainstreet Daily News.
Open Division and the Road to Fort Myers
Baseball postseason series play requires more than one pitcher to advance, a dynamic that mirrors how college baseball and Major League Baseball playoffs are structured, with best-of-five and best-of-seven series at higher rounds. Florida's new Open Division tournament, created by a 10-0 board vote in June 2026, will include the eight highest-ranked teams after district tournaments, divided into two four-school pools, according to the FHSAA. Open Division teams will play best-of-three series across three pool-play rounds, with the top two teams from each pool advancing to a best-of-three state semifinal series; the semifinal winners will then meet in a best-of-three championship series in Fort Myers.
All series games, whether in the Open Division or the traditional classifications, will be played at the higher seed. State finalists in every class will converge on Fort Myers.
The board's history shows it hasn't been willing to expand game volume across the board. When directors originally approved series playoff proposals in September 2024, they voted down a companion proposal that would have expanded regular-season schedule limits from 25 to 28 games, according to the Crestview News Bulletin — a move coaches had sought specifically to help build pitching depth for series play. That reluctance leaves coaches navigating the new format with the same regular-season game limits but a deeper postseason pitching demand, a tension that is likely to define how teams prepare for next spring.
