Over the quick historical past of the Nationwide Excessive Faculty Invitational subject hockey match, there’s been one state whose public faculties have been conspicuously absent.
That state is Massachusetts, which has greater than 200 public, parochial, and prep-school groups, and is a big chunk of participation in america.
The reason being that there’s a rule on the books banning MIAA members from taking part in a couple of out-of-state opponent on consecutive days.
This rule stored MIAA members from competing in prestigious winter ice hockey tournaments, or Christmas basketball tournaments, or different occasions with opponents from different states. Yup, when you’re a border city trying to play a match in New York, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, or Rhode Island, the mere accident of the place the state traces are drawn hold the Massachusetts groups from taking part in on consecutive days in a match setting.
However in a vote final week, the rule was scrapped, permitting every particular person college district to find out the wants of their groups throughout an interstate sequence of contests.
Now, if there’s one state governing physique of sports activities I’ve been crucial of through the years, it’s the Massachusetts Interscholastic Affiliation.
In any case, they’ve made some cockamamie choices through the years, comparable to placing helmets on feminine lacrosse gamers within the Nineteen Nineties, setting up two utterly totally different units of subject hockey guidelines throughout the 2020-21 tutorial yr, and just lately placing a playoff loss of life penalty on all the athletic program at Peabody Bishop Fenwick (Mass.) throughout the 2023-24 tutorial yr, banning each athletics staff on campus, no matter income or gender, from the postseason.
However on this “blind squirrel discovering a nut” second, the MIAA has simply given the inexperienced mild for groups to compete exterior the state.
It’s about time.
