CIAC soccer finals will use penalty kicks next fall

Penalty kicks will be used to determine a winner in a CIAC state championship game if necessary beginning next season. The CIAC boys and soccer committees approved the change.

Several proposals had been submitted by leagues to end ties in state championship games after both the Class LL and Class M state finals ended in scoreless ties in November. One was made by the SWC, instead to use PKs, which are used to determine a winner in every other round of the tournament.

The CIAC soccer committees had determined at its December meeting that it needed to survey the entire membership to make sure this was the course of action to take. The committees had the power to make the change without the proposal having to be vetted.

“When you have two sets of co-champions, there is a spotlight on it,” said CIAC associate executive director Gregg Simon. “The membership was very clear in its desire to do away with co-champions.”

Simon said over 160 member schools responded to the survey.

“That is a rarity to get that much of a response. Over 94 percent of the member schools wanted to do away with co-champions. It was a no-brainer.”

These were the first girls state finals to conclude with co-champions since 2016.

The last season a co-championship happened in a boys final was in 2014.

This leaves field hockey as the CIAC’s only sport that still uses co-state champions in its finals.

Simon said discussion about any change to the overtime soccer periods — there are two 15-minute periods currently with no golden goal — would be discussed at the next committee meeting in April.

The CIAC Board of Control also passed two golf proposals. The first was to start both the fall and spring seasons one week earlier beginning with the 2022-23 seasons. So next fall the season will begin on Aug. 23 and the spring matches can begin on March 27, 2023.

The other proposal was to push back the CIAC state championships in the fall back a week, to Oct. 24, so the regular season can end a week later on Oct. 19. That will give teams more chances to make up matches if need be, and have less time off between the state championships and the New England championship meet on Nov. 5.

The New England meet was held at the Mohegan Sun Golf Club in Baltic last year. Nothing has been finalized yet for this year’s championship.