Huguenot asked to play down?

[GilliamRatings]

After all those years of playing up and acting like moving to AA would be a humiliation, the school asked to play down next cycle? It took them a long way to come around to my way of seeing things, but they finally have, I suppose. Anyway, the VHSL said, "No. 4A for you guys."

 

[CRF4Dan]

VHSL had no other option but to say no. To have gone through all this realignment they would have looked silly to go back to letting schools play up or down. I know for Huguenot it will be a tougher road but no more so than when as you said they played in Division 5 when they could have easily been a Division 3 or even 4 school.

 

[GilliamRatings]

I was stunned by how many schools asked to be in different classifications (I really couldn't figure what the reasoning was behind the requests). Have they not been paying attention the last two years?

 

[DinwiddieProud]

I don't understand. There really is no provision for anyone to ask to move up or down. The ADM numbers are used, the line shifts a little to equal out the two groups in each of the 6 levels. If your school is sitting right at the line, and you are the the odd school, you could lobby for what you want, but that's about it. A very few schools might be in this position. Or, I'm totally mis-informed about the whole process.

Matt, with your skills with numbers, you should see this better than most.

 

[GilliamRatings]

You really don't understand.

This has to do with my history with Richmond City Schools asking to play up. I started feuding with them about this in 1999 and ended up with at least one coach hating me when I wrote an article that rebutted all his comments in the Richmond Times Dispatch about why their schools should play up.

So now, I find it humorous to see the school asking to play down, after the whole school system thought I was a jerk when I said that the Richmond Schools (and a few other schools) were destroying the VHSL system by playing up.

I was the original advocate of nobody playing up or down.

This post was edited on 7/2 10:11 AM by GilliamRatings

This post was edited on 7/2 10:14 AM by GilliamRatings

 

[OldIndian81]

The irony (gall?) of a Richmond City school wanting to play down or moan

about the new system is rather amusing. The old system would've worked so much better if that 50% (approximate) of the Central Region schools that played up had instead played in their appropriate classification (along with several others from around the state). That would've helped considerably in reducing the divisional enrollment differences between regions. Rival games could've still been played as non-district games.

 

[GilliamRatings]

Re: The irony (gall?) of a Richmond City school wanting to play down or moan

If they had played in AA I am convinced they'd have never changed the old system.

 

[EPJr]

it was never about playing up or down but rather about playing the schools in your area and therefore having to travel less.

 

[VaPrepsRod]

You really don't understand.

This has to do with my history with Richmond City Schools asking to play up. I started feuding with them about this in 1999 and ended up with at least one coach hating me when I wrote an article that rebutted all his comments in the Richmond Times Dispatch about why their schools should play up.

So now, I find it humorous to see the school asking to play down, after the whole school system thought I was a jerk when I said that the Richmond Schools (and a few other schools) were destroying the VHSL system by playing up.

I was the original advocate of nobody playing up or down.

This post was edited on 7/2 10:11 AM by GilliamRatings

This post was edited on 7/2 10:14 AM by GilliamRatings

Matt,

Maybe you can work the math on this thing.

I think that the VHSL is still making one mistake in the enrollments and that is trying to get the exact same amount of teams in each classification.

There is not a need for that.

For example...

Suppose that there are 32 schools with enrollment under 400 (Class 1A)
Then, there are 36 schools with enrollment between 800-1000. (Class 2A)
This also assumes that there are 0 schools with enrollment between 401-799.

The VHSL would look to get 34 schools into each by making the cutoff after the bottom four teams in Class 2A thus giving them 34 schools in each class.

I think that they could avoid the border problem by not worrying about having the exact same amount in each, but rather, focus on keeping the more similar schools together by finding the natural break points in attendance numbers.

I might not be explaining this well.

 

[CRF4Dan]

I think you're on to something there Rod... That said, I don't see the VHSL going that way... not until enough schools complain that is.

 

[GilliamRatings]

Yeah, I wouldn't mind having a "cusp" zone where teams could go up or down depending on what made more sense.

For a school like, Orange, we're barely 5A and geographically removed from all the 5A schools. We would fit fine in 4A and definitely not be dominating anyone.

I still believe that the need for six state champions is the big problem.

Everytime I have looked we could go to a 4A or 5A system with pretty tight districts and regions. 6 classes just seems to make the school distribution a little too sparse so we end up needing meaningless districts.

I am still married to the idea of 4 classes or 5 classes with 4 regions in each class and 3 or 4 districts in region. I do believe districts champs should get automatic bids simply because I think there should be one way to make the playoffs that is obvious to everyone involved. Win your district outright.

I find three years into this system with districts and conferences and regions that don't mean what they used to and some regions going to sub-regions and some classes and regions cross bracketing while others don't is a bit hard to explain to our athletes, parents and even coaches.

The only thing I like is that we got rid of teams playing up (ridiculously in some cases).

I think the districts are superfluous at this point. With a good rating system like mine, we could just let schools put together their own schedules. If groups of schools wanted to form into a district, that would be fine, but purely optional.

 

[falcettik]

Matt, your comments are right on point.

I could not agree with you more on the VHSL's misguided notion that we needed 6 classes when they came up with this system 2+ years ago. When this originally got out there was also a lot of discussion about too many teams qualifying in each classification, which happens when you have 32 teams per classification qualifying for the playoffs out of only 50-60 per class. Going to 5 would have been far better, and I think going to 4 classifications is optimal. The playoffs should be reward and not another participation trophy, which is almost what they have become with the current system.

The second big mistake (and I am not the first to say this) was letting regions decide the format. If it is a state level playoff, then everyone plays the same format-period. The South has tweaked it so that they have virtually the same system now as before with their pods and that is something the VHSL needs to correct. Sorry about the travel, and maybe a lower gate, but it is what it is. Other states have a statewide playoff so why can't Virginia? It is not a level playing field even now and they need to fix it (if they can even do that). I know this idea will never fly, but I also believe a state playoff should have a single pool from 1 to X (in our current case, 32) and it plays out 1 v 32, 2 v 31 etc but I know that will NEVER happen.

One point I disagree on is automatic qualifying for district champions. Districts are usually based on proximity of the schools and are not always created equal. The old Northern Region was a perfect example of this (when only 4 made the playoffs) when one year three teams from the Concord qualified and one from the Patriot. There is no way that Patriot team was the 4th best team in the North that year. Similar scenarios happened a few more times until they went to 8 teams per region (when we had 4 regions statewide). If the playoffs stay with 16 teams per region, then OK on district champions qualifiying automatically as long as all teams are seeded by points. Under the current system with 16 teams I don't really see any realistic way a district champ would not accumulate enough points to make it in (although it is theoretically possible). But if you reduce the number of qualifying teams (which is another good option if we stay with 6 classifications) then district champs getting an automatic qualification does potentially become an issue.

 

[CRF4Dan]

Gilliam, myself, even CentralRegionTom years ago kicked around several different models for realignment, most included 4-5 classes. Problem is and the reason the VHSL won't decrease the classes is because with six classes you get six state championship games and I don't know the figures but I'm sure the VHSL is not interested in losing money.

 

[dringtuoti]

Just a side note since you brought up VHSL & $$, I do know the VHSL is going to add quarterfinal games in basketball this year because they lost money for the 2nd year in a row. I'm sure the pending lawsuit had something to do with that. I'm not sure if they are going to eventually add quarterfinal match ups in other sports or not. I'm guessing conferences go by the wayside in a few years because many conferences never really understood the concept and started scheduling their conference for regular season match ups creating many of the travel budget issues.

 

[GilliamRatings]

I'm still all about district champs (except for my blatant exception below). I showed a few years ago that a team could have went 10-0 and missed the playoffs if we went strictly by power points. I further demonstrated that they could have been the best team in the history of the universe and missed the playoffs. Luckily it didn't happen. So in actuality, it matters more that the district champs get in with a smaller number of teams in the playoffs than a bigger number of teams (as you pointed out, they're getting in already with a bigger number of teams).

In my perfect world where all teams in a district are in the same playoffs then the district championship can and probably should function as a round robin playoff on its own. The idea is that 10 games gives you a lot more information about who should advance than 1 game.

HOWEVER.....When the districts are full of teams going to DIFFERENT playoffs like they have been for decades now. The district champ thing becomes problematic, to say the least. This is how we had our messes in Richmond with 9-1 teams missing the playoffs. What happened in Richmond was that the D6 schools would swallow up all the district championships and there would be no wild cards so we would get 9-1 teams (who literally lost only 1 game by a point or even in overtime) who missed the playoffs. Meanwhile the D5 playoffs would usually have a couple of 6-4 teams or a 5-5 team in there.

 

[DinwiddieProud]

Matt, send me an email, please. Wcook2@verizon.net