We aren’t like any other state. Our people are different, our landscape is different. My parents taught me that no one person is better than any other, but I think Hoosiers are better than just about anyone else.
You can disagree, if you’d like, but I feel pretty good about that stance.
One of the things I always find entertaining is when people move to Indiana from other states. I love their reaction to the fact that in every high school sport here, every team makes the postseason tournament. No one has to qualify. No point system to decipher to see who gets in and who doesn’t. No tie breakers. No voting or opinions.
If you went winless in the regular season or if you played to perfection, your postseason status is exactly the same.
You’re in.
It’s not like that everywhere. You have to achieve some sort of success to be eligible to win a championship in your class in your sport in your state.
So I get this when talking to people who didn’t grow up with the “everyone is in” approach, you get a lot of reactions – and many of them aren’t positive.
There is the “I suppose everyone gets a participation trophy when they lose” crowd. They are of the opinion that a team ought to have to earn their way into the postseason like the pros and college teams do. Which is sort of the point why we shouldn’t do that. These are high school kids and high school teams. They aren’t getting shoe money from Adidas or guaranteed contract cash. They are kids. Allowing them a new life in the postseason is not only not hurting anyone, it’s appropriate.
The claim that having fewer teams in the postseason tournaments would mean fewer bad games and blowouts and more drama is off-base. Yes, teams that aren’t very good don’t have any realistic expectations of winning championships. But don’t tell the NorthWood Panthers they didn’t belong in the 2005 3A football playoffs. That year, they went 3-6 in the regular season. In many states, they would have only been at a playoff game if they bought a ticket. But they received a Hoosier state automatic bid, went 6-0 and won a state title.
Did they deserve to be there? You bet they did.
Consider this, too: how many teams suffer some sort of an injury in the preseason or early season that makes their record look bad? But they get healthy at the right time, build some chemistry, win a few games down the stretch and then become the team no one wants to play in the tournament.
Do they deserve a chance to prove what they can do? You bet they do.
There are a few things I would like to tweak in Indiana’s tournaments.
I would like to see an effort made to have as many tournament games played on Fridays and Saturdays. Granted, it’s not always possible to do it. But with class sports, teams in sectionals are more spread out and long bus trips are the norm in tournaments. If there was a way that you could, say, play sectionals in certain sports all in one day, as an example.
The key to that would be smaller sectional fields. For basketball, you could have four-team sectionals with games on Friday and Saturday nights. That would eliminate traveling on Tuesdays or Wednesday, and then again perhaps twice more on the weekend. Then you make semistates four-way tournaments like the regionals are now and you’ve got yourself something.
If the IHSAA is serious about being the facilitator for “education-based athletics” (and I think they are), then we should try to do as much as possible to keep their games off of weeknights. That probably should mean playing fewer basketball games, 22 is too many.
Volleyball teams should be allowed another weekend tournament to help relieve their midweek schedule.
Just a few ideas.
No matter what, the fact every team gets a chance to win a state championship is the best system.
Remember, it’s a hope for all teams … not a guarantee.
