Our football team is AAAA. Our volleyball team is AAA. Our swimming and diving team is AAA. Our baseball team is AAAA. Our lacrosse teams are Division 2. However, we at North Hills choose to qualify ourselves as, in general, Quad A. But just what does being Quad A mean in the broadest sense? In American high school sports, schools are broken into classifications based on student population. Depending on the school’s class size, they can be anywhere from Single A to Quad A in a given sport in the state of Pennsylvania (Florida goes up to 6A, among a few other states).  Classification has nothing to do with talent, ability, or merit. It’s strictly numbers.

It has come to my attention that North Hills takes a deeper meaning from our Class AAAA classification in the major sports. To us, it covers so much more than sports. Our school has a Quad A Art Department. Our Drama Club put on a very Quad A performance of “The Night of January 16^th” last month. Mr. Kreider is a Quad A principal. The cafeteria cookies are Quad A. I am the Editor-in-Chief of a Quad A newspaper (my efforts to change this edition’s name to The AAAArrowhead fell short). We associate the highest level of classification with the highest level of achievement. The label “Quad A’ has become a standard—an aspiration. It’s a goal.

What comes off as arrogance on our part to many other schools is actually a standard of excellence we set for ourselves. North Hills collectively sets high expectations for itself, not just as an institution, but as a people. And we have the right to. Though, this does not give us the right to look down at schools classified as  Single A for being Single A. Or Double A schools for being Double A—whether it be in athletics, academics, or the arts. That is condescending. Being condescending is obnoxious and being obnoxious is very Single A. What we can do, however, is be proud of North Hills, and our accomplishments, and our standards.

“Quad A” is less a classification than an adjective that means “great” or “superior.” “Quad A” is an ideal for what we value and strive to achieve. Other schools that accuse North Hills of being pretentious misunderstand us. We don’t think we are better than them. We just are.