Yesterday around 1 p.m., the brackets for the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association field hockey tournament were released.
That’s nothing new; it’s usually about this time of year when governing bodies set up the single-elimination brackets, allowing school administrators to secure their home grounds, umpires, and sell tickets.
Only this year, the MIAA had to overcome some legal technicalities when it came to the results from a number of schools in the western part of the state. A number of schools failed to properly enter scheduled into the Arbiter online portal. According to reports, schools were required to have their full schedules in the system by the second week of September.
The fly in the ointment is the fact that the Pioneer Valley Interscholastic Athletic Conference has a postseason tournament before the MIAA Tournament. A number of schools did not enter placeholder games for the Western Massachusetts Tournament, and as a result, the MIAA counted these missing games as forfeits, affecting a number of seedings within the state brackets.
Given what I have been seeing when it comes to controversies in the game over the last few years, it’s amazing that we’re seeing another befalling the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ state governing body of sport.
There are plenty of states like states like Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Virginia who conduct multi-layered postseasons in field hockey without this kind of difficulty.
It only makes me wonder if the MIAA’s hard-line stance is meant to put pressure on teams scheduling tournment games between the end of the regular season and the release of the state brackets — maybe even to get schools to drop these tournaments.
