The stupidest thing your state high school association allows to happen

1) Knowing the coaches at the school you're whining about, I can tell you that your premise is bullshit. The two coaches at Pioneer have like 75 years experience between them and, while individual runners might get help is they ask (like they would at any town school if the opportunity existed), the coaches don't blanket coach that school.
2) track and cross-country is more or less an individual sport. It's why the MHSAA runs the sport in Divisions, based on the number of schools that offer the sport, instead of classes, which is a rigid number based on enrollment.
3) What's next? Participation medals?

And with playing in Ohio Stadium, the association here switched this year from Legion Field to alternating between Alabama and Auburn (which ever has the Iron Bowl, the other gets the football finals). They don't care if 2,000 people will play in a 100K stadium. They want the kids "to have the experience of playing in the stadium where they see their heroes play" Well, that and Tuscaloosa and Auburn threw the AHSAA a shitpot full of money to have the honor. If they wanted to play at right-sized stadiums, they'd play at Troy or Alabama A&M but that wasn't going to happen since A) troy is in the middle of nowhere and B) Huntsville is too far from the southern half of the state to get a walk-up and, the chances of getting a day crowd like Hoover used to get at Legion Field are as remote as getting a Huntsville area team in the finals, cause it is, collectively, full of suckitude.

 

I'll tell you the next stupid thing the AHSAA will do.
It's supposed to be full of thunderstorms across the state on Saturday. Not like last weekend, but still.
State track meets are Friday and Saturday in Birmingham (small schools) and Mobile (large schools). Ever since then-AHSAA director Dan Washburn wanted to give a big fuck-you to Hoover and Rush Propst and not approving a Sunday game in Herbie's football classic in Ohio, the AHSAA won't allow Sunday games in anything.
Every once in a while, there'd be a Sunday baseball game in a county tourney. (God forbid there be wholesome family entertainment such as high school athletics on a Sunday). But by and large, they didn't schedule on Sunday.
Now, you're faced with the possibility of lightning delays and such that might delay the meet. In a normal world, they'd say come back Sunday, we'll pick up at 1 p.m. so everyone can go to church. But the AHSAA will make everyone come back Monday to finish -- even though it's a championship event, even though it won't reimburse travel for schools to come back to participate, even though they won't pay for extra nights in hotels for teams where it would be economic foolishness to go and come back (ie: A Huntsville team in Mobile), and even though it would force families to pay out of pocket for hotels, meals and miss time at work to come back.
If they have to postpone Saturday's track meets, the AHSAA will make them come back on Monday or call the meet, neither of which is "in the best interest of the children."

 

I graduated from an Iowa school and enjoyed playing baseball in the summer instead of in the spring, as is done in Ohio, where I live now. Sure we had a few rainouts, but they were always rescheduled. Never had a game cancelled because of snow.

 

I know of the KSHSAA (Kansas) allowing something to happen on a Sunday once in the past 15 years and it well could have been the only time it ever has. Rain plagued the state baseball tournament in Lawrence one year and they played on Sunday but dumped the third place games. In every other instance, as far as I know, postponed baseball and softball state tournaments skipped Sunday and played Monday (still dumping the third-place games).

This policy caused a farce at the end of the state track meet about 5 or 6 years ago. A big storm with fierce lightning came through Wichita near the end of the meet. As I recall, Classes 5A and 6A hadn't yet run the 4x4 relays and in 5A less than 4 points separated the boys' first- and second-place teams, both of which had 4x4 teams in the finals.

Did the KSHSAA finish the meet after the storm passed? Nope.

Did they come back on Sunday? Nope.

Come back at all? I think you already know the answer.

They stopped the meet right there and then and declared the team results final. And those teams in 5A threw fits. This also meant there were no state medalists in boys 5A and 6A and girls 6A 4x400 relay that year (5A girls 4x4 was the last event completed before the storm).

 

The head of our association likes to say "It's in the best interest of the children."
This, after last year, when he confided after a spring filled with swine flu delays and rain, that if the baseball and softball playoffs had been rained out one more week, they would have been canceled. Cancel the baseball finals in a state that has four AA teams and several players in the majors -- in a town with two college and two municipal facilities? yes, because the main AA park would have had a home stand and couldn't be in use. What would be more important: letting the kids play for a championship or playing it at the AA park?

 

Canton, though, has the benefit of TWO outrageously nice 20k seat stadiums (Paul Brown and Fawcett). I'd have to believe that helps scheduling-wise in terms of having time to clean the places up between games when you're hosting 6 divisions in 2 days.

And for what it's worth, the last time bidding for this went down, the Greater Columbus Sports Commission's proposal was to have games at Crew Stadium and Dublin Coffman. Ohio Stadium wasn't even in play.

http://www.columbussports.org/media/press_releases.cfm?pressrelease_id=107

 

Some people actually like the summer baseball and softball. What it does is allow rainouts to be easily made up. We'll have softball teams play early afternoon at one place, then go play their regularly scheduled game that night.

 

Good place to let off this steam:

In my previous state, when the high school baseball team was home, the softball team was AWAY.

This state, they play at the same frickin' time at home. A one-man sports staff and I have to piss off half my readers by having to choose.

Also, same thing with basketball. Previous state, if the boys were home, the girls were on the road and vice-versa.

Here, I have to cover two basketball games back-to-back and pound out two stories back-to-back. On Friday nights it's a real killer.

 

Most of the schools in our area (we've got eight in the playoffs) moved the first round up a day to get them in before the weather turns bad. If the rain will hold off until Saturday, as it looks like it might, we should get the first round in the books, because it doesn't look like many of them are going to get to a third game.

BTW, I noticed Warren C. and DeSoto are going the softball route and playing the first game up there, then possibly two at your place on Monday. How did they get WC to agree to that?

 

HH: This baseball/softball situation works great if you are shooting the games. But for writing, you end up either focusing on one and ignoring the other, or doing a piss-poor job trying to switch between both. I feel your pain.

Best you can hope for is one game turns into a blowout, and you can then focus on the other game.

Regarding basketball, B/G doubleheaders are done for the right reason: to give the girls more of the spotlight. But what ends up happening from a newspaper standpoint is the boys get a full story, and the girls get a short writeup (at best) or a couple graphs tacked onto the end of the boys gamer.

 

Playing Thursday wasn't an option for our schools because of state testing this week. Warren Central and Vicksburg match up with the schools around Memphis, so taking those tests and then bussing four hours to a game would've been rough.

I think moving the game to DeSoto was WC's idea. The forecast up there was a little better today than Saturday, when it's supposed to piss in North Mississippi. So they did what they had to do to have a chance of wrapping this thing up before the middle of next week.
WC has a tarp, so as long as there's not fish swimming in the outfield -- and there could be, based on the forecast for Sunday -- they should be OK for Monday.

 

Texas has the toughest road to hoe for any HS beat writer. Basketball starts immediately after the football regular season and takes no holiday breaks. Baseball and softball go into June with state tournaments. I think the Division I and Division II state champs in each sport, 5A to A, is stupid until you see that Arkansas has A to 7A and you can literally go to the other end of the state for a district game. Oklahoma lets everyone go to the playoffs in all sports but football and soccer. Case in waste of time: a softball team drives 4 1/2 hours for a regional where they play two games, getting their asses handed to them, and goes back home after three hours of fun with something like a 5-20 record.

Oklahoma does do something savvy to accomodate Title IX. They play BOTH slowpitch and fastpitch softball.