The stupidest thing your state high school association allows to happen

The Kansas State High School Activities Association is a unique organization. It is one of, if not the, most conservative high school athletic associations anywhere.

* a 500-mile-from-the-state-line to anywhere travel limit for competition. It's one of the big ones because should a Kansas team be good enough to be invited to a prestigeous tournament in Arizona or Ohio, it has to turn it down. It used to be 500 miles from the school, so the Kansas School for the Deaf couldn't play the Colorado SftD (587 miles from Olathe to Colorado Springs) but could play the Minnesota Academy for the Deaf (411 miles to Fairbault). Somebody actually realized that it wasn't fair that half of Kansas' schools could play someone in Cheyenne, Wyoming and half couldn't.

* Football teams may only conduct a pre-season intra-squad scrimmage. No scrimmage with another school. No "jamborees" with multiple schools.

* The sportsmanship rule (Rule 52), which is enforced so tightly they almost stripped a team of a state championship in basketball because their students forgot themselves and stormed the court. Because being happy you've won your first state crown ever is showing up the other team, ya know.

Yeah, the KSHSAA is good for some comedy gold every few years. Here's the latest:
1) A proposal from one of the small-school leagues to reduce competition dates by 20 percent and eliminate post-season play until the economy improves. This would mean 7 football games, 16 basketball, baseball and volleyball games, and so on. They also want to use one fewer official in each sport (I think they did remember that volleyball, baseball and softball can't be officiated by one person, but this being the KSHSAA, who knows?).
2) Putting the private schools in their own class/group for post-season. In the KSHSAA, I think the number of private schools is about 25. None are in Class 6A. There's only four in 5A (Kapaun and Carroll in Wichita, Aquinas and Bishop Miege in the KC area). The rest are 4A and smaller (which means the largest of the remaining 21 schools has 415 students). One of them has 18 students. So yeah, it's fair to put Carroll (807 students) against St. Xavier (the one with 18) in the same playoff group.

I could go on and on and on. That's no exagerration.

 

At least Kansas isn't that bad. All 9-0 teams are district champions and all district champs host first-round games and all the runners-up go on the road. A team can be 8-1 and not host it's first two (and in rare cases, first three) playoff games, though. It also happens it more often than not that the team that was 9-0 and won its first-round game will have to go on the road in the second round — a trip made even better when it's driving up to face a team that was the winner in a battle of 4-5 qualifiers.

 

The other 48 state associations laugh at your assessment and point to Jack Roberts of the Michigan High School Athletic Association as the poster child...

 

Oklahoma plays fastpitch in the fall and slowpitch in the spring.

 

Which makes the fastpitch teams that want to journey into Texas for a tournament shit out of luck.

Interestingly, the biggest school in Oklahoma refuses to play slowpitch.

 

Remember when the host team for football playoff games was determined alphabetically?

When I was in school they alternated between A-Z and Z-A in determining who the home team was each year.

I went to a school that was at the end of the alphabet so we either played every game at home or every game on the road, regardless of the record of our opponent or whether or not we beat them in the regular season.

 

I actually completely forgot about Pioneer until you brought it up. Was sort of complaining about Cross Country. But yeah Pioneer has that perfect storm. Lots of money from parking revenue, good coaching, good talent pool, large school, ability to run indoors year round. They are pretty dominant, and I think they are a good example of why there needs to be a fifth division. There's that group of D-1 teams that are like Pioneer (just so dominant). I'm pretty sure their girls team could beat many small college programs. Luckily, I've only had runners go against them twice - once at States and once at an invite where I only brought our elite athletes. If I had to compete with them in duals, I would slit my wrists - last year for example, I had 3 girls run state qualifying times in 300 hurldes - in a meet against Pioneer, they would have finished 4th, 7th and 8th.

 

It kind of sucks in Group A's Region B too. In the basketball playoffs this past year, Dan River (Danville) traveled to George Mason (Falls Church) for a "Region" Quarterfinal game. It could've been worse, if the bracket had forced Dan River and Clarke County (Winchester) to meet.

 

Mentioned it earlier but the same thing happened to our baseball team. We were pretty good and we played Kennedy Catholic. We played a double header which I am doing PA for. They beat us 38-1 in the two games combined. Another thing is my high school lost in the section final to a jail. A JAIL. It is a correctional facility that has a lot of guys from NYC and ran our slow team up and down the court for a 1 point win. It is ridiculous. And the brought half the jail with them, and they starting jumping on the court.. from the second deck.

 

Most of the grievances related to Michigan have already been aired, but here are a few relatively minor ones that haven't been brought up:

Our football playoff system works relatively well, but because playoff qualification is determined by a set benchmark (go 6-3 or 5-3 and you automatically qualify) and the only benefit of playing a tough schedule is for seeding (and even then, it's not a huge benefit) teams are much more interested in going farther afield to play a patsy than take on a good team or a bigger school close by, which is making scheduling next to impossible for schools of any size in rural regions like our own.

A school cannot host softball districts without a baseball team or vice versa, which makes it impossible for schools in our area, many of which are slowly adopting self-funded programs in one or the other (weather is a major limiting factor - our spring season is basically May). Two years ago, the main HS in my coverage area played its first district tournament in school history 200 miles away.

Further, a lot of people in my area have boo-hooed and belly-ached that the district tournaments in basketball and hockey (especially hockey) are not seeded. The two best hockey teams in our area met in a play-in game (five-team bracket), but it turned out to be a 9-2 blowout, so it was largely moot. However, when you get a tournament in which the games were 9-2, 6-2, 5-1 and 7-0 (championship), it takes the steam out of what is, in my coverage area, the single most important prep event of the year.

 

I remember that. We didn't make the playoffs when I played ('83 through '86), but I thought it rotated -- teams listed first alphabetically hosted the first game, then the team listed last alphabetically hosted, unless that team hosted in the first round, then the other team hosted.
I realize the state was trying to find a way to be fair, but it seemed like so much extra work when a simple seeding or even neutral site formula (like Ohio uses) would have been simpler.

 

JBHawkEye,
Remember when Iowa went from 6-on-6 girls basketball to 5-on-5? I thought a civil war was going to erupt.