The governing body of high-school sports in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the MIAA, is considering another major revision in how champions are chosen in scholastic sports.
Recently, the commonwealth went from a four-region format to a statewide format for its athletic competitions, with multiple divisions based on enrollment size.
But now, the MIAA is considering something which is only done in the California Interscholastic Federation’s San Diego Section. In that section, the best eight teams (chosen by a ranking formula) are skimmed from the usual number of divisional tournaments to compete in what is called an “Open” tournament.
Massachusetts has done this before, in baseball and boys’ ice hockey. These were called “Super 8” tournaments, and were cancelled in 2021 behind questions of equity, since not a single girls’ sport had an elite championship of this sort.
Had Massachusetts field hockey had something like this, the best teams — presumably the likes of Watertown, Uxbridge, Somerset-Berkeley, Sandwich, Norwood, and Walpole — would have been placed into an elite bracket, with the rest of the teams playing out in their planned brackets.
The proposed concept, called the Division 1A Tournament, is being discussed in various sporting committees in the commonwealth. Not everyone was on board; the boys’ lacrosse committee overwhelmingly voted for a 1A Tournament, while the girls’ lacrosse committee overwhelmingly voted against it.
From a competitive viewpoint, having great teams in one bracket is akin to what New Jersey did a few years ago for its Tournament of Champions. However, there’s always the danger of trying to manage a result to the detriment of the team. Remember, there was a situation a decade ago in the CIF San Diego Section when Fallbrook (Calif.) Union set themselves up to lose their final match of the season in order to not be selected for the Open Tournament and having to play San Diego Serra (Calif.) in the first round.
I can see this happening, especially for a school which may have overachieved and might have been the favorite in one of the four sectionals, but might not have played teams at the level of those in the remainder of the 1A field, especially if one of the potential opponents is a male player.
This could get interesting.