The stupidest thing your state high school association allows to happen

Florida allows at large bids in swimming and weightlifting, but not in other individual sports like track, tennis. Something like the top three in each event move on in swimming and weightlifting, the next five best times or scores from each region are awarded at large bids to the regional and state meets.

However in track this is not the case, only the top four in each event move on to regionals and then state. I had 3/4 of a team not show up for regionals, a week after winning districts, so they could attend Prom. Shouldn't the people who finished 5th-8th be allowed to take their spots ?

 

I'm a former Northwest Region hoops player! The name is a complete misnomer, and not just because there's no such thing as Northwest Virginia (that would be West Virginia). It really is just a catch-all - outlying areas of NOVA, the Fredericksburg schools, the Roanoke area (my stomping grounds), Danville, Halifax and Albemarle. Yes, that's two communities on the southern border of the state that are included in the Northwest Region.

When I was in high school, all of the schools from the dearly departed Roanoke Valley District were within two counties of Roanoke. Not so any more. They're in a district with Halifax now - we played them non-district when I was playing. That's a 6-hour round trip FOR A DISTRICT GAME.

 

I think it was in 2006 when Lee Academy from Arkansas played River Oaks (from Monroe, La.) for the Mississippi Private School Association Class A football championship.
A couple years later Glenbrook, La., won the title. It's a two-hour drive from Mississippi.
I can see how some of these schools ended up in the MPSA (now MAIS). A lot of them are on the borders, and in some cases there's not a lot of similar-sized public schools near them. But how a team from Shreveport ends up in a Mississippi-based association boggles the mind.

 

Yeah, we've got St. Aloysius in that boat here. Since they're on I-20 and can go north or south, they flip-flop between the Highway 25 division leading up to Starkville, and the southern division centered around McComb and Brookhaven.
The AD has actually tried to schedule some MAIS teams to fill out the basketball schedule the past couple years. There's a ton of those around here so it builds some different rivalries and cuts down on travel costs.

 

When I was SE in Danville, I went home to my folks in PA for Thanksgiving, then traveled to the George Washington at C.D. Hylton football region final. It was a shorter trip going through three states to cover that game than coming straight from Danville.

 

California: Where do I get started?

How about Sectional setup, which I think dates back to teams traveling by horse and buggy. OK, LA needs to be a section unto itself, as does San Diego. But do we really need separate sections for public schools in San Francisco and Oakland, both of which are in the single digits, especially when the parochial and private schools compete in the larger, adjacent Sections?

Geography is a joke as well. North Coast Section runs from Fremont, leaps the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge into Marin and winds all the way up to the Oregon border. The Southern Section, always the 2,000 lb. gorilla in any discussions, covers everything south of the Grapevine not covered by LA or San Diego. At least a few schools on the eastern border (mostly around Lake Tahoe) are sane enough to play in Nevada leagues to avoid travel, and, yes, the Cali kids do win Nevada state titles.

No real state football structure due to size, but they've been experimenting with a bowl system the last few years, five divisions in basketball and volleyball (but that can even be deceiving), one in track, cross country and boys wrestling, which makes sense.

 

A four-class basketball tournament.

That's all.

/bitteroldindiananative

 

Kentucky may have a different number of classes for some sports (6 for football, 3 for cross country and track and one for everything else), but it gets one thing right: All schools, public and private, are together.

There's not enough (less than 40, IIRC) privates to be put in one class and if you let them go, you lose your nationally rated volleyball teams (Louisville Sacred Heart, Louisville Mercy, Louisville Assumption, Covington Notre Dame, Erlanger St. Henry), your biggest gate in football (Louisville St. Xavier vs. Louisville Trinity, which has been featured in USA Today and ESPN several times) and almost all of your good swimmers and tennis players.

Public school state tournaments in volleyball, tennis and swimming would become a joke.

Plus folks have realized while you might get killed by a private school, it's easier to control their recruiting when they have to play by your rules. Kick them out of the association and they might poach each and every decent athlete you have.

There's only two private schools in our 18-school region and they both suck at most sports (other than boys' soccer). The publics in my area certainly don't mind beating up on those two particular privates. It's when the publics get beat by the metro Louisville Catholic schools is when everyone gets in a huff.

People don't realize that privates like them don't win because they're private ... they win because they're better.

When the public school I graduated from went to the state volleyball tournament for the second time, they drew a small public from the Appy Mountains. After disposing of them, it was an elite 8 match with one of the northern Kentucky volleyball powerhouses, which laid down a 25-2, 25-1 smackdown on my alma mater, which is still the worst second-round loss in state history for any school.

That private school had more D-I players coming off its bench than my tri-county area of eight schools has had in 10 years combined.

 

Texas high schools who have the misfortune of being in Region I in Class 4A or 5A laugh at all your geography problems. 5A goes from El Paso to Lewisville, 640 miles where you might have to meet in the middle for a playoff game. Hell, the fastest way to get from Amarillo, also in that region, to El Paso involves almost no driving in Texas - you get 440 miles of New Mexico instead. Class 4A is a carbon copy, and everyone drives 5-6 hours to meet in the middle for regional track. Ugh. That's a "few big cities in massive areas of blank space" problem more than an issue caused by the UIL, but it is good for a lot of bitching when the closest district opponent is 110 miles away.

Missouri baffled me by redrawing district and freaking class lines by sport. I get what they're trying to do in theory, but it makes my head hurt that a school can be in four different classes and an endless amount of districts in the same school year.

 

The problem in West Texas is only getting worse because while the state is growing rapidly in general, all the growth is in the central I-35 corridor while the West is stagnant or shrinking.

Lots of longtime 4A and 5A schools are now 3A and 4A respectively (Big Spring and Brownwood are two recent droppers and Stephenville may follow in 2012). It's causing Region I to encroach across I-35 in the larger classifications.

The easy solution would be for the UIL to create smaller districts out west, but then the other regions would bitch that it's easier for Region I schools to make the playoffs. They could create bye districts out west, but again, that means bigger districts elsewhere and the UIL is required to keep the 245 largest schools in 5A.

The central part of the state keeps adding about 10 new schools a year, and that keeps the west (and to an extent, the east) falling farther behind in enrollments. I think the UIL will soon be forced to create a Class 6A, or at least a de facto one by splitting 5A into big and small schools.

 

Yawn.
How about an all-in playoff structure that also fails to award any team for regular season success. You went 9-0 and allowed five touchdowns all season? That's nice — now drive three hours to play a 4-5 team in the first round. Oh, and since you can't leave school early, you're walking off that bus about 45 minutes before kickoff. Have fun.
Or the tennis playoffs, where you have to be undefeated in order to advance in the individual draw. So No. 1 and No. 2 singles players split matches in the regular season and sectional — too bad, because some volleyer from Springs Valley is going to win state.
Or the lack of a best-of-three series for baseball, meaning a team with one great pitcher has an advantage over a team with four very good arms.
Or saying you have to limit press credentials this year at the state finals because of all the great interest, but then handing out credentials to Kent Benson, Bob Hammel and the rest of the over-65/semi-retired/"I got nowhere else to go"-crew.

 

Another option might be for the Tascosas, Permians and Coronados to, like those mentioned on the Nevada Cali state line, go play for someone else's state championship. But that would devalue it for Mojo.

West Texas regionals are absolute hell. I remember driving one time to Midland for a basketball regional. I saw a fire on the horizon. An hour later, that same damn fire was on the horizon. West Texas was the part of America God just got tired of trying to create and just stomped his foot on the whole damn area. Flattest son of a bitching place around with the possible exception of the Illinois cornfields going south from Chitown.