(NOTE: This story is part of our Top Sports Stories of 2020 series, which runs throughout this week.)
It seems like ages ago that the entire MIAA delegation got together at Assabet Valley Regional Technical High School in Marlborough, but somehow the meeting to decide the fate of high school tournaments in the Commonwealth did take place in 2020.
I was in attendance out east for the Feb. 28 meeting, where MIAA member schools voted 193-140 to approve a statewide tournament structure, eliminating sectional tournaments throughout the state. The meeting and vote of MIAA member schools was the culmination of a two-year process, with the organization’s Tournament Management Committee (TMC) offering its final pitch to the packed auditorium at Assabet Valley.
The statewide format will not take into effect until the 2021-22 school year. While that originally offered some consolation for Western Mass. schools, the pandemic all but ended sectional tournaments altogether. There were no Western Mass. tournaments this year in what was supposed to be the final go-around. No games at the Curry Hicks Cage, and other memorable destinations.
“For me, now we lose those hometown games,” Turners Falls Athletic Director Adam Graves told me immediately following the MIAA vote in February. “We had a (boys basketball playoff) game the other night hosting Franklin Tech. The gym was packed, it was a great atmosphere. Are we ever going to get that back again? Are we ever going to get (basketball) games back at the Cage again, that championship Saturday where teams are playing one game after another? I don’t think it’s ever going to be like that, but it’s now our job as ADs going forward to preserve what we think we do well in the West, which is the way we run our tournaments.”
Franklin Tech AD Joe Gamache was one of the Western Mass. folks in attendance who spoke at the meeting in February, and one of the 140 that voted “no” for a statewide format. After the vote, he explained to me in the hallway outside the auditorium at Assabet Valley that Franklin County ADs will do their best to preserve local history and legacies moving forward.
“We need to figure out how we’re going to move forward and keep what’s in the best interest of our student-athletes, at least in Western Mass.,” he offered. “We have to figure out how we can preserve their best interest moving forward and try to sell them an opportunity that they no longer will receive with the MIAA as it currently stands.”
Nearly a year later, with time running out before statewide tournaments are set to begin in the fall of 2021, there are still questions surrounding how teams will be seeded. The top 32 teams throughout the state in each sport will qualify for the single-elimination brackets, but while MaxPreps was originally set to be the seeding formula for the MIAA, that is now up in the air. The TMC met two weeks ago to discuss potential alternatives to using MaxPreps to rank and seed teams, and more conversations are likely to follow between now and next year. Stay tuned on that front, as MaxPreps elicited a strong reaction from schools throughout the state.