No tweaks to MIAA Statewide Tournament for now
Those hoping for tweaks to the MIAA Statewide Tournament will have to apparently wait one more year.
On Tuesday morning the MIAA Tournament Management Committee announced that there will be no changes to margin of victory or the power rankings formula used to determine state tournament seeding for the 2023-24 interscholastic athletic season.
At its June meeting the TMC will vote on whether or not tournament games should be played at neutral sites prior to the state semifinals as currently outlined.
“I disagree with waiting (to discuss tweaks) but I get it,” Wellesley athletic director and TMC member John
Brown said. “I think once we get to the spring season’s conclusion we should look at the two full years of data and see if we have to make adjustments. That’s what we said we would do. That’s what I would do. We will see if we do that.”
Back in June 2021, the Tournament Management Committee and Board of Directors both outlined a two-year window where over the course of the 202122 and 2022-23 seasons the association would collect data from its tournaments before making a decision on any changes that may have to be made to the tournament’s format or qualification methods.
That two- year data point, however, seemed to be kicked down the road to three years on Tuesday.
“Anything can happen in one year. Anything can happen in two years. But if you get three to four more years of data then it shows an equal trend across the board,” Burlington athletic director and TMC chair Shaun Hart said.
Brown, however, disagreed with the changing of the goal posts throughout the course of the meeting.
“At one point we were told it was two years of data. Now it’s three years of data. It’s in the minutes from the June 2021 meeting,” Brown said. “This is the first I’ve heard of needing three years of data. Where did that come from?”
There was no clear answer provided to Brown’s question. Once again on the table was also the discussion of the return of the Division 1A Tournament which engulfed the boys ice hockey and baseball scene in Massachusetts before they were voted out prior to the inclusion of the statewide tournament in the fall of 2021.
In 2021, the MIAA Board of Directors, on behalf of a recommendation from the Blue Ribbon Commission and in consultation with the Office of Civil Rights (OCR), announced that there would be no Division 1A Tournaments until at least 2025. The ruling was made at the time because the tournaments led to inequity as a handful of select teams abided by double elimination rules while other tournaments were uniform in single elimination. They were dubbed ‘elitist.’
On numerous occasions Tuesday both Hart and Westboro athletic director
Johanna Dicarlo made allusions to the fact that a Super Eight cannot return for the time being due to a declaration from the OCR. When Brown asked if a legal document existed between the MIAA and the OCR that explicitly stated that Super Eights would no longer be incorporated, Hart, Dicarlo, and Committee Liaison Sherry Bryant were non-committal.
The Tournament Management Committee voted down a recommendation from the Wrestling Committee, 10- 5, that would have added a fifth qualifier into the state tournament from sectionals. As currently constituted four individuals qualify from sectionals to states with one alternate in the event a student-athlete is unable to participate.