TERRE HAUTE — Ah spring. The greening of the trees. The start of baseball. The Indianapolis 500. And IHSAA postseason bungling.
Once again, the spring sports postseason cycle has exposed the obvious — the IHSAA does not know how to handle its class system, a viable postseason schedule, or how to make the postseason accessible to the average fan and manageable for the average school district.
Every year it seems to be something different. This year, it was scheduling gridlock.
Softball, baseball, tennis and track all had postseason events scheduled in the days after Memorial Day. While the combination of those sports in that time period wasn’t new, the conglomeration of events was.
The difference from past years is that the softball and baseball sectionals were both scheduled to start in the same week — softball on Memorial Day, baseball on Thursday they had been split up by a week in recent seasons.
Additionally, tennis regionals and the semistates, plus the track regionals — events that took place before Memorial Day in recent years — were crammed into the same week as the baseball and softball sectionals.
The result was predictable … organizational chaos. Administrators had to figure out a way to have people at three different sites at once on certain days. Buses had to be massed together and sent to the four corners of the Earth to say nothing of having to be marshaled at the last minute to account for weather issues. It affected media coverage as outlets had to pick-and-choose what was covered based on resources that weren’t nearly as stretched out when the sports were spread out more.
And all of that was before the rain hit. The IHSAA can’t be blamed for Mother Nature’s mischievousness, however, the IHSAA could have guessed based on, oh, 100 years of past experience, that rain can and does effect the spring postseason far more than any of the other postseasons.
Given that, it might have behooved someone on Meridian Street to think that maybe, just maybe, it might not be a good idea to try and cram 64 softball sectionals, the opening round of 64 baseball sectionals, 16 tennis regionals and 16 track regionals in the span of five days.
The impact will continue this weekend. Quixotically, it will be felt most by the fans of teams that have been most successful.
Riverton Parke fans, for example, have a choice to go Indianapolis Lutheran for softball regional or Cowan (Cowan!) for the baseball regional. But Panthers fans won’t be able to do both, because they’ll be going on at the same time. Brilliant.
This new wrinkle of fail joins the annual arcane annoyances we’ve all grown accustomed to, such as the inflexible way sectionals are assigned and the slavish devotion to maintaining a sectional site from start to finish.
In any economy, but in this one in particular, there is no earthly reason why Terre Haute North and Terre Haute South’s baseball teams should have to make a pain-in-the-rear end, 90-minute-plus trek, half of it over cruddy two-lane roads, to play a sectional championship game at Martinsville merely because it was the preordained site.
Why can’t the sectional structure be flexible enough to change the site if the two teams play nowhere near the preordained one? They’ve managed to square that circle in other states, why not here? Fire up Fiddler On The Roof. Tradition!
It really wouldn’t be hard to fix much of this. Here’s what the IHSAA can do:
• Start track and tennis two weeks before Memorial Day. Let those sports have some exclusivity at sectional time. If that means an earlier start time for those sports, so be it.
• Start softball sectionals the week before Memorial Day with a Friday, Saturday, Memorial Day championship format, bleeding into Tuesday if need be, with the regionals on the Saturday following Memorial Day.
Tennis regionals would be the Tuesday and Wednesday before Memorial Day with the Saturday semistate. Track regional would be the Tuesday and Thursday before Memorial Day. Just as both sports were before this year.
• Start baseball as it is now on the Thursday after Memorial Day, with a Thursday-Monday-Tuesday/Wednesday format. The regional would be as it is now on Saturday.
That takes care of most of the gridlock, now for the sectional sites. This should apply to boys basketball, girls basketball, volleyball, baseball and softball. Football is an issue for another day:
• Mandate that all teams within a sectional must schedule a home-and-home with the other teams in their sectional field. In a six-team sectional field, it would eat up 10 games, with the other games free to be scheduled by the schools themselves.
Your sectional field would essentially become your conference and all postseason seeds (egads! seeding!) and sites would be determined by where you finished in those games, in other words, home-field advantage.
If a school finishes 10-0 against teams in its sectional, it deserves it. This would also avoid those idiotic 19-1 vs. 18-2 (or 1-19 vs. 2-18) first-round sectional matchups. By proxy, it would also introduce a brave, “new” concept to the IHSAA world … actual meaningful regular season games that affect the postseason. Cue Also Sprach Zarathustra!
Would it work? Who knows? But it couldn’t be any worse than what the IHSAA foists upon us now.
Todd Golden is sports editor of the Tribune-Star. He can be reached at (812) 231-4272 or todd.golden@tribstar.com.
From the Press Box
From The Press Box: IHSAA just never gets it right
- From the Press Box
-
-
FROM THE PRESS BOX: ISU baseball has pluses, minuses for tourney bid
Last Thursday, when Indiana State’s baseball jumped around in a celebratory dogpile after clinching the Missouri Valley Conference regular season championship at Bob Warn Field, no one thought that a little over a week later, the dreaded NCAA Tournament bubble would fly over Terre Haute. -
FROM THE PRESS BOX: Subtle switch has fostered MVC baseball parity
When Indiana State was crowned as the regular season baseball champion of the Missouri Valley Conference last Thursday, it marked the fifth different regular season champion the league has had since 2005.
-
FROM THE PRESS BOX: ISU has done enough to be in NCAAs
When you get older, you’re supposed to get wiser. I don’t know if I qualify, but I’m trying.
-
FROM THE PRESS BOX: TH’s Murans back in the Derby … this time with favorite
When Terre Haute native Paul Murans experienced his first Triple Crown horse racing run as part-owner of Mucho Macho Man in 2011, the experience was — to borrow a phrase from one-time Marquette coach Al McGuire — seashells and balloons.
-
TODD GOLDEN: IHSAA debate interrupts more pressing issues
State Senator Mike Delph has sowed a 15-year-old wind and put the emotional class basketball debate back on the public’s mind.
-
TODD GOLDEN: ISU eyes prize one game at a time
Most baseball fans know that the baseball season — even a college baseball season — is a marathon, not a sprint.
-
TODD GOLDEN: Grass is green enough for Indiana State in Missouri Valley
Take a look around the Missouri Valley Conference landscape and it would be easy to assume that a significant portion of the league membership is searching for perceived greener pastures.
-
FROM THE PRESS BOX: Sycamores are Odum’s team now
Soooo … who wants to talk about the 2012 Indiana State men’s basketball season?
-
FROM THE PRESS BOX: ISU will face uphill climb in MVC in 2013
The Missouri Valley Conference Tournament semifinals are always scintillating. No more so than Saturday when Illinois State upset 15th-ranked Wichita State 65-64 and when No. 25 Creighton took care of business with a 99-71 victory over Evansville.
Arch Madness indeed. -
FROM THE PRESS BOX: Effort, heart, concentration are fleeting for ISU
Every time Indiana State’s men’s basketball wins a game, you think to yourself, OK, now is when these Sycamores live up to their potential.
-
FROM THE PRESS BOX: Peyton’s place belongs to Eli
The good people of Indianapolis justifiably puffed out their chests throughout Super Bowl week as the city received deserved rave reviews for the job it did as hosts of Super Bowl XLVI.
-
TODD GOLDEN: Teammates, colleagues express their loyalty to Weatherford
Sometimes you worry whether someone is stopping to smell the roses when they smell rosiest.
-
FROM THE PRESS BOX: Does melted ice reveal Belichick's heart of gold?
If you’re into Youtube — and who isn’t these days? — there’s a vintage television profile of then-Cleveland Browns coach Bill Belichick posted on the popular site.
-
TODD GOLDEN: Indiana State men caught between expectation, reality
The Missouri Valley Conference is hush-hush on how it puts together its matchups for the annual conference schedule.
-
TODD GOLDEN: Accentuating the positive with ISU's Odum
There’s something to be said for being your own worst critic, especially when it comes to sports.
-
TODD GOLDEN: Loss hurts, but national exposure is ... priceless
Trying to advance the philosophy that any publicity is good publicity is probably an effort wasted on a losing team less than 10 minutes removed from a disappointing defeat where victory had been oh so close to fruition.
-
TODD GOLDEN: The great playoff race is on for Indiana State football
The great race is on.
-
TODD GOLDEN: Fans owe ISU seniors 10,000
I have covered Indiana State football since the 2004 season.
-
FROM THE PRESS BOX: Indiana State has used up its playoff mulligan
It’s been a glass half-full kind of season for the Indiana State football team, so it was easy — and exciting — to get caught up in looking ahead to scenarios that placed ISU in the FCS playoffs, even if ISU didn’t win out.
-
FROM THE PRESS BOX: Not a coulda, shoulda for Sycamores
Indiana State's football team is getting tired of being graded on the curve of its own past futility.
-
TODD GOLDEN: Supernatural Shakir was a sight to behold
I’ve often heard it said when a player has a big statistical day that he’s racking up “video game numbers.”
-
TODD GOLDEN: Sycamore defense absorbs lesson
A win is a win, they say. And for Indiana State, none of the Sycamores are going to take back or put an asterisk next to their 48-34 victory over Butler on Saturday.
-
TODD GOLDEN: And now on to the normal part of the schedule
The Steve Miller Band would’ve appreciated Indiana State’s trip to Penn State.
-
TODD GOLDEN: Sabermetrics has changed love of baseball
I turned 40 this summer. No problem.
-
FROM THE PRESS BOX: No debate about quality of Vigo baseball
It’s standard practice for losing high school coaches — especially coaches who led teams on a deep postseason run — to heap praise on their seniors one last time. It’s even more so when one of those seniors was the rock of a given team for a four-year period.
-
FROM THE PRESS BOX: Season dies down, but ISU’s plate not empty
With coaching changes having mostly sorted themselves out and with recruiting having just entered its quiet period today, college basketball has settled into its more relaxed offseason mode.
-
FROM THE PRESS BOX: Winning spring more important than winning the spring game
Indiana State football coach Trent Miles has been involved in collegiate coaching since 1987. He knows better than anyone that there’s no one-size-fits-all way to approach the annual spring football game.
-
FROM THE PRESS BOX: Friday wait was worth it for Indiana State
Many have seen the famous Salvador Dali painting, “Persistence of Memory.” The most memorable images in the surreal painting are unquestionably the pocket watches that are drooped over a ledge, a tree branch, etc.
-
Many Sycamores, past and present, to remember
The minute it became apparent Indiana State had punched its ticket to the NCAA Tournament with a 60-56 victory over Missouri State on Sunday, I reflected on all of the moments in the previous seven years of covering the Sycamores that led to this.
-
FROM THE PRESS BOX: Sycamore AD Ron Prettyman explains Cal Poly interest
Editor’s note: Indiana State Director of Athletics Ron Prettyman interviewed and participated in a public open forum for the same position at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo last week.
- More From the Press Box Headlines
-
FROM THE PRESS BOX: ISU baseball has pluses, minuses for tourney bid
Beryl Threatens Rain, Winds on Southeast Coast
Raw Video: National Mall Concert Shut Down
Biden Addresses West Point Graduating Class
Beryl Makes Landfall on Florida Coast
Raw Video: Gay Protest Blocked in Moscow
UN Blames Syrian Forces for Shelling Houla
Astronauts Enter World's 1st Private Supply Ship
Tropical Storm Beryl Strengthens, Nears US Coast
Shell Readies Arctic Drill Ship
Today in History
Vatican in Chaos After Butler Arrested for Leaks
NJ Man Charged With Murder in Death of Patz
Jimmy Carter Endorses Egypt's Election Results
Dozens of Children Killed in New Syria Attack
50 Years Later, Underground Fire Still Burning
Support, Fun for Kids of Fallen Soldiers at Camp
Raw Video: Activists Allege Massacre in Syria
Raw Video: Unruly Passenger Restrained in Miami
Dragon Arrives at Space Station in Historic 1st
Passenger Restrained on Flight to Miami Arrested
Raw Video: Man Rescued From River in China
Beyonce Entertains the First Family
Celtics crush Sixers in Game 7
Alleged Lego Thief Faces Felony Charges
Has Snooki Named Her Baby?
Heat Wave Warms Holiday Weekend
Inspiration for the class of 2012
Colorado College Student Shot While Trespassing
Will Smith & Josh Brolin on "Men in Black 3"
80-Year-Old Skydiver's Nightmare Jump
JWoww Sizzles in a Black Bikini
Sliders on the Grill
Cruise ship crunch
Backstage With Beyonce
Ultimate Creamy Potato Salad
Pope's Personal Butler Under Arrest
Jenny McCarthy's New Man
Tyler's Classic Coleslaw
Britney Spears Under X Factor Fire
Flesh-Eating Bacteria Victim Hits Milestone
