6A-West tourney begins Saturday
By the end of today, Wednesday, April 26, the pairings for the 6A-West Conference baseball, softball and soccer tournaments should be released.
Coaches and athletic directors from the schools that make up the conference — Siloam Springs, Russellville, Greenwood, El Dorado, Texarkana, Sheridan, Benton and Lake Hamilton — are supposed to send in their final votes. Brackets for this conference tournament will be set, and after that every team in the league should know what has to happen from here on out to advance to the Class 6A state tournament.
Let’s go back and refresh a little bit, since it’s been two months since basketball season ended — the last time Siloam Springs teams were participating in a conference tournament.
The 6A-West Conference — and the schools listed above — exists during the regular season in football only.
In the following team sports — volleyball, basketball, baseball, softball, soccer — teams in 6A have competed in blended 5A/6A conferences during the regular season to reduce the amount of travel and time it would take to go from one corner of the state to the other, i.e. a trip from Texarkana to Siloam Springs for a conference game.
Following the regular season, teams split up into their respective classifications for “conference” tournaments to determine who qualifies for state.
So that’s where we’re at right now.
After Thursday’s home soccer games against Clarksville, the regular season should be over for all sports.
Saturday is the scheduled first day of the 6A-West Conference Tournament. It’s highly likely — as in 99.9999 percent — that baseball and softball will be on the road Saturday for their opening games.
That same probability is the case for both soccer teams playing at home on Saturday.
I only say likely because it’s not official. That will happen later today.
After Saturday’s games, the second round of the conference tournament will be Tuesday, and the final round is on May 6. All teams must win one of their first two conference tournament games to qualify for the state tournament.
As far as coverage of these conference tournament games go, the Saturday and Tuesday playing dates conflict with the print deadlines of the Herald-Leader, just like they did in volleyball and basketball conference tournament games. The result of which is these games won’t get reported on until the next game has already been played or, in some cases, after the season is already over.
My hope is that eventually these playing dates can get moved up a day — maybe to Mondays and Fridays to give our readers a chance to see these in our local newspaper in a timely manner.