The fall sports season locally all but came to an end Tuesday as two of the last three teams standing bowed out of state competition.

Our hats are off to those two teams — boys soccer squads from Juniata and East Juniata high schools — along with Juniata’s cross country team and a pair of Mifflin County runners, all of whom were able to end their season in PIAA competition.

Although their historic run came up a tad short, we also note the success of Mifflin County’s football team, which not only ended an extended losing streak, but won more than half its regular-season games to clinch a spot in the District 6 Class 6A tournament, and nearly advanced to the district final, holding off Altoona — in Altoona — until late in the game.

Still in play is Juniata’s football team, the uncontested District 6 Class 4A champion, which travels to DuBois tonight for a subregional game, the winner of which will play in the state tournament.

The performance of the soccer teams is especially notable — East Juniata won 18 straight games on the way to the Tri-Valley League championship and District 4 Class A crown, while Juniata claimed wins over two higher-seeded opponents in the District 6 Class 2A tournament, including a win over the top-ranked team.

Regrettably, we have to note that their season-ending losses highlight what has become the great failure of our state’s regulatory agency for high school sports: management of private (non-boundary) schools.

Both of these small, rural public schools were eliminated by programs that can recruit, and do not have their classification adjusted by the areas from which they draw students.

This is especially notable when looking at Juniata County athletics — a number of sports in the county are formed from cooperatives between the two high schools; some include athletes from Juniata Christian School as well.

Each time a public school agrees to take students from another school, it indeed creates an opportunity for the students who might otherwise not be able to play a particular sport. But it often changes the classification of the receiving school — a population measure that somehow private schools, who can recruit the athletes they want, continue to escape.

It’s unfair. And it’s long past time the PIAA takes steps to rectify this inequity on what should be a level playing field.