Shorter playoffs in the works for District 1
With high schools in District 1 returning to competition in a fall season delayed the COVID-19 pandemic, thoughts inevitably turn to the postseason.
In a year unlike any other, that picture does not take shape easily.
At its Sept. 23 meeting, the PIAA established an abbreviated playoff structure for the fall, setting the table for District 1 to act with both urgency and patience to adjust to a high school sports climate that has seemingly changed daily over the past three months.
“We still have a lot to figure out in a short amount of time,” said District 1 Assistant Executive Director Sean Kelly.
A shortened postseason — the PIAA football championships will be held Nov. 27-28, a week earlier than in 2019 — leaves District 1 with a compressed playoff schedule after regular seasons running until the final week of October.
For Class 6A and 5A football, it permits a four-team bracket over two weeks. In Class 4A, the District
1 champion begins PIAA play Nov.
6, the week after the regular season ends.
“Nov. 6 and Nov. 13 will be our district games, and then Nov. 20 will be the state semifinal,” Kelly said. “That shortened our playoff season by two weeks.”
Determining those postseason entrants is a difficult task with no easy options. With teams competing only in-league, there is no non-league gauge via common opponents and a decreased sample size to apply the power ranking formula.
How the playoff field will be established is still to be determined. District 1 has established subcommittees to examine each sport and classification beginning this week with the intent of finalizing the postseason picture in the next two weeks.
“It’s an excellent question. We have our points system in place, the question is, is there going to be enough of a sample size for that point system to be accurate,’ Kelly said. “After this weekend, when the Suburban One League plays, then we’ll get a better idea of what those rankings look like, but that is a task of our subcommittee to look at that.
“Would steering committees be a part of that process? That’s a challenge as well because schools aren’t going to be playing crossover games, different leagues aren’t going to be playing one another.”
For team sports beyond football, the number of games played will be greater, but disparate. Pioneer Athletic Conference soccer teams are scheduled to play 11 contests while Ches-Mont teams have six games — the minimum for postseason eligibility — before the end of October.
Postseason planning for individual sports are less prickly: the District 1 Golf Championships are on schedule for next Monday and Tuesday. All three participating leagues — the Pioneer Athletic Conference, Ches-Mont and Suburban One League — held qualifying tournaments this week. Cross country and tennis are also on schedule.
Playoffs aside, district leadership is pushing to allow teams to maximize contest dates by playing through November. District 1 President Dr. Michael Barber put forth crucial motions that were approved by the PIAA board to allow schools to stage games until Thanksgiving, even after postseason elimination, as well as suspending a PIAA bylaw that requires a team to play 50 percent of maximum allowable games to be eligible for postseason competition.
For football, teams can compete in the postseason with four regular-season games instead of the previously required five. On Tuesday, the Ches-Mont League unveiled a four-game league schedule.
“District 1 is so unique from any district in the state of Pennsylvania because we had four tiers of schools: schools that were starting pretty much on time, schools that were opting out completely, schools that were opting in late and trying to get into the playoffs, and schools that weren’t interested in the playoffs,” Kelly said.
The Central League is choosing not to compete in the postseason.
District 1 has not set a firm deadline for schools to commit to postseason interest.
“I can sympathize with what athletic directors were going through all summer with making schedules and then tearing them up,” said Kelly. “... We need to be flexible for all the schools involved and cater things to their needs.”
On Tuesday, District 11 voted to opt out of the PIAA tournament and conduct district tournaments through the weekend before Thanksgiving. District 1 could follow a similar road. There will be inevitable hand-wringing over shortened District 1 playoffs, but it’s important to maintain the perspective
of just a few months when even getting on the field was in doubt for many schools.
“These are the most unique circumstances that anybody has ever dealt with,” Kelly said. “If you had asked teams three months ago what their goal was, their goal was to get kids on the field and be able to play even if it was a certain amount of games. Now that teams are getting into the season, the focus does turn to the playoffs and postseason and that does become a goal and a priority and that makes perfect sense. But ultimately this is one of the most unique times anybody has ever been through and we need to adapt and adjust to it.”