Tourneys possible for spring season
The MIAA Tournament Management Committee surprised no one Wednesday morning when it voted unanimously to have no MIAA sponsored tournaments for the Fall 2 season.
The TMC then opened eyes when it openly discussed the possibility of allowing spring sports to have MIAA tournaments. This news was music to the ears of coaches, athletic directors and spring athletes who were deprived of competing last year due to the pandemic.
TMC chairman Jim O’leary opened the door at the outset by putting out the notion that the committee would be wise to begin preliminary discussions in that direction. O’leary also added that the committee members should go back to the districts to see what kind of feedback they would get.
Wahconah athletic director Jared Shannon urged caution in terms of making any sort of hasty decision, while others felt it was important to put the wheels in motion sooner rather than later.
“I think it’s time to talk to consider talking about having some sort of spring tournament,” Burlington athletic director Shaun Hart said. “Because of what was lost last spring, these kids deserve some sort of spring tournament.”
The other main topic for discussion was how the MIAA should move forward in terms of power seeding for postseason tournaments beginning in September. Maxpreps was the format voted in when the state voted to go to a statewide tournament last March, but more and more schools have grown leery given the lack of transparency they’ve received in terms of exactly how those numbers are crunched.
A new power rating system proposal put forth by former Boston Herald High School Sports Editor Jim Clark received overwhelming support. After listening to arguments for and against, the committee voted 17-1 in favor of exchanging Maxpreps for Clark’s elaborate system.
“Maxpreps was a starting point, but I’ve always hoped that we would have our own system within two years,” Hart said. “This new power ratings system (created by Clark) came along a lot sooner.”
The fact that Clark’s system would be in-house as opposed to Maxpreps appealed to many schools. Westboro athletic director Johanna Dicarlo also said that Central and Western Mass. really liked it when they saw the model of how the brackets would break out.
The only major concern was the fact that score differential factored into the ratings.