May Is A Time For New Things
May 3, 2017 at 3:48 p.m.
By Roger Grossman-
The calendar has flipped over to the month of May. In theory, although not in practice here in northern Indiana yet, it is a sign that warm temperatures are here to stay. Farmers have bags of seed waiting to be planted, gardeners have designed plans for their flower beds and the leaves on the trees have exploded from their branches.
If for nothing else, it’s a time of optimism and happiness.
For sports people, May means the professional hockey and basketball playoffs are underway, we are seeing trends in Major League Baseball teams, and the Kentucky Derby is coming up at Churchill Downs this weekend.
But this year, we high school sports fans got an extra dose of “newness” with the release of the new sectional assignments for most of the team sports for the next two years.
The Indiana High School Athletic Association released those new assignments Monday, headlined by the creation of a third class for boys and girls soccer. The sport has grown to the point where expanding from two classes to three was needed for the equity and balance in state tournament competition based on school enrollment and success factors the IHSAA strives for.
For football, not a lot of things changed for our local teams, except that Warsaw has now been shifted to a sectional based geographically to its north and west as opposed to its south and east. The Tigers now are stationed in a four-team sectional that includes Penn, Chesterton and Valpo. That’s the bad news. The good news is that they could have been sent south and had to deal with the Carmels, Westfields and Fishers of the world – but they were not.
Triton also is moving, and will be in a sectional that IS the Hoosier North Conference minus Knox and add South Central.
Boys basketball being ‘king’ in this neck of the woods, the change in Sectional 4 in Class 4A has a lot of people talking. Penn and Plymouth have swapped sites, with Penn going back to the South Bend-based sectional and Plymouth joining the gathering at North Side Gym next March. Plymouth fans were grumpy already by having to drive into South Bend for their sectional at Washington, so imagine what they are like knowing they now have to drive to the north side of Elkhart.
The other significant change on the boys side is the change in 1A, where the addition of Smith Academy in downtown Fort Wayne to the mix shifted schools around and put Elkhart Christian into a sectional with Triton.
The girls sectionals pretty much line up the same as they have, with the same change to Sectional 4 in 4A as the boys alignment. Smith Academy is only registered for tournament play in boys basketball in this alignment cycle, so the arrangement for the girls tournament remains as it has been for those two sectionals.
I think now would be a good time for the Warsaw Athletic Department to put in a bid to host the girls basketball sectional.
For volleyball, 4A Sectional 4 is a six team affair, with Elkhart Central the lone non-NLC entity involved.
As far as soccer goes, the class setups are like this:
Girls: Warsaw is in a 3A sectional with schools from the Fort Wayne/Huntington North area; NorthWood and Wawasee are in the same sectional in 2A; Lakeland Christian, Manchester and Whitko are all in 1A.
Boys: Warsaw is in 3A; NorthWood, Wawasee, Manchester and the fledgling boys program at Tippecanoe Valley are 2A; Lakeland Christian and Whitko are 1A.
Now that the IHSAA has defined the sectionals, the schools in each sectional in each sport will have meetings to see who is interested in hosting those tournaments, and then will collectively send that word along to Indianapolis. If they can’t figure it out, the IHSAA will step in and do it for them.
The IHSAA did one other thing worthy of note this week. It approved a plan to begin the start of six fall teams’ seasons two days earlier than they had in the past.
You’re tilting your head as you read and are asking “Roger, what is the big deal about two days?” The big deal is it moves the first day teams can play real games from Monday of what they call “Week 7” of the IHSAA calendar (which starts after the moratorium week that contains July 4th in it) to the Saturday before that. That allows teams, specifically volleyball teams, to schedule meets, matches and games on that Saturday. It may not seem like a big deal, but it will allow them to spread out their seasons a little.
Now, I have a theory on this: I think this is the next move in the IHSAA’s moving the volleyball tournament schedule to one week earlier on the calendar. In other words, I think you will eventually see the volleyball tournament start a week earlier than it is now. The reason … the overlap between girls volleyball tournament play and the start of girls basketball practice. We warned you last summer that a lot of girls were going to be forced to choose between one sport or the other because of that, and I’m pretty sure the IHSAA is listening.
This will stay this way for two years, and then in spring of 2019 we will get the classifications and sectional alignments for every school in the state.
It isn’t exactly Christmas in May, but it does give us something to talk about besides the Cubs’ starting pitching and the Bears’ draft disaster.
The calendar has flipped over to the month of May. In theory, although not in practice here in northern Indiana yet, it is a sign that warm temperatures are here to stay. Farmers have bags of seed waiting to be planted, gardeners have designed plans for their flower beds and the leaves on the trees have exploded from their branches.
If for nothing else, it’s a time of optimism and happiness.
For sports people, May means the professional hockey and basketball playoffs are underway, we are seeing trends in Major League Baseball teams, and the Kentucky Derby is coming up at Churchill Downs this weekend.
But this year, we high school sports fans got an extra dose of “newness” with the release of the new sectional assignments for most of the team sports for the next two years.
The Indiana High School Athletic Association released those new assignments Monday, headlined by the creation of a third class for boys and girls soccer. The sport has grown to the point where expanding from two classes to three was needed for the equity and balance in state tournament competition based on school enrollment and success factors the IHSAA strives for.
For football, not a lot of things changed for our local teams, except that Warsaw has now been shifted to a sectional based geographically to its north and west as opposed to its south and east. The Tigers now are stationed in a four-team sectional that includes Penn, Chesterton and Valpo. That’s the bad news. The good news is that they could have been sent south and had to deal with the Carmels, Westfields and Fishers of the world – but they were not.
Triton also is moving, and will be in a sectional that IS the Hoosier North Conference minus Knox and add South Central.
Boys basketball being ‘king’ in this neck of the woods, the change in Sectional 4 in Class 4A has a lot of people talking. Penn and Plymouth have swapped sites, with Penn going back to the South Bend-based sectional and Plymouth joining the gathering at North Side Gym next March. Plymouth fans were grumpy already by having to drive into South Bend for their sectional at Washington, so imagine what they are like knowing they now have to drive to the north side of Elkhart.
The other significant change on the boys side is the change in 1A, where the addition of Smith Academy in downtown Fort Wayne to the mix shifted schools around and put Elkhart Christian into a sectional with Triton.
The girls sectionals pretty much line up the same as they have, with the same change to Sectional 4 in 4A as the boys alignment. Smith Academy is only registered for tournament play in boys basketball in this alignment cycle, so the arrangement for the girls tournament remains as it has been for those two sectionals.
I think now would be a good time for the Warsaw Athletic Department to put in a bid to host the girls basketball sectional.
For volleyball, 4A Sectional 4 is a six team affair, with Elkhart Central the lone non-NLC entity involved.
As far as soccer goes, the class setups are like this:
Girls: Warsaw is in a 3A sectional with schools from the Fort Wayne/Huntington North area; NorthWood and Wawasee are in the same sectional in 2A; Lakeland Christian, Manchester and Whitko are all in 1A.
Boys: Warsaw is in 3A; NorthWood, Wawasee, Manchester and the fledgling boys program at Tippecanoe Valley are 2A; Lakeland Christian and Whitko are 1A.
Now that the IHSAA has defined the sectionals, the schools in each sectional in each sport will have meetings to see who is interested in hosting those tournaments, and then will collectively send that word along to Indianapolis. If they can’t figure it out, the IHSAA will step in and do it for them.
The IHSAA did one other thing worthy of note this week. It approved a plan to begin the start of six fall teams’ seasons two days earlier than they had in the past.
You’re tilting your head as you read and are asking “Roger, what is the big deal about two days?” The big deal is it moves the first day teams can play real games from Monday of what they call “Week 7” of the IHSAA calendar (which starts after the moratorium week that contains July 4th in it) to the Saturday before that. That allows teams, specifically volleyball teams, to schedule meets, matches and games on that Saturday. It may not seem like a big deal, but it will allow them to spread out their seasons a little.
Now, I have a theory on this: I think this is the next move in the IHSAA’s moving the volleyball tournament schedule to one week earlier on the calendar. In other words, I think you will eventually see the volleyball tournament start a week earlier than it is now. The reason … the overlap between girls volleyball tournament play and the start of girls basketball practice. We warned you last summer that a lot of girls were going to be forced to choose between one sport or the other because of that, and I’m pretty sure the IHSAA is listening.
This will stay this way for two years, and then in spring of 2019 we will get the classifications and sectional alignments for every school in the state.
It isn’t exactly Christmas in May, but it does give us something to talk about besides the Cubs’ starting pitching and the Bears’ draft disaster.
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