Super 8 goes on hiatus
Division 1A hockey, baseball tournaments put on hold
Schools won’t be complaining about getting snubbed by the Div. 1A baseball and hockey committees for at least four years.
The MIAA’s Tournament Management Committee voted 12-2 on Wednesday in favor of a proposal by the Blue Ribbon Committee not to consider any applications for a Div. 1A tournament until July 1, 2025 at the earliest. The four-year window would help ensure MIAA sport committees can support their applications with four years of data under the new statewide tournament structure starting in the fall 2021 season.
Pam Gould, the superintendent of public schools in Sandwich, made the presentation on behalf of the Blue Ribbon Committee. She referred to the fouryear window as a recess to assess data and see if there is a need for a Div. 1A tournament with a new statewide format in place.
The two dissenting votes were cast by Hull athletic director Scott Paine and Wellesley AD John Brown. Paine, who serves as the MIAA South Sectional tournament director for both hockey and baseball, questioned the TMC as to whether either sports committee was contacted prior.
“There’s 30 years of Super 8 hockey history here,” Paine said. “We were working on proposals for Div. 1A hockey tournaments for the boys and girls.”
Upon the conclusion of a fouryear sport-by-sport analysis of whether a particular sport would indeed benefit by having a Div. 1A tournament, the TMC would reserve the right to establish one if the following guidelines are met.
The first is if there is a pattern of dominance by a specific group of schools in that sport. If there is evidence to prove that a sport is being dominated by the same schools in that time frame, then holding a Div. 1A tournament will bring competitive equity to all divisions and will provide more balanced and competitive divisional tournaments. It also must be the case that the size of this subset is large enough to sustain a separate tournament.
The MIAA Blue Ribbon Committee would have to approve the proposed Div. 1A tournament and then it must meet all MIAA and
TMC format and rule policies: (1) Selection and seeding will be done using the same power-rating system that the TMC uses for all other tournaments; (2) Div. 1A tournaments be single-elimination; (3) Div. 1A tournament games will be held at the same facilities and venues used in the other division tournaments; (4) The TMC will equitably assign officials across all tournaments, including any 1A tournament.
The Super 8 hockey and baseball tournaments have provided a lifetime of thrills for those schools fortunate enough to have won it. Braintree baseball coach
and interim athletic director Billy O’Connell captured a pair of Div. 1A championships and was disappointed to see it put on hiatus for the time being.
“The Super 8 tournament in baseball did exactly what it was meant to do,” O’Connell said. “The same schools were dominating year in and year out at the time. The sport needed a lift and the Super 8 provided that. They got the eight best teams in the state together and it allowed for some pretty good Div. 1 and Div. 2 teams to win state titles that they may not have if there wasn’t a Super 8 tournament.”