Changes to SCT schedule coming in 2009

Happy new year, everyone!

Now that it is officially 2009, it wouldn’t be too much of a reach if we started looking ahead to the new season – now less than three months away!

There has officially been a key change made to the Somerset County Tournament schedule, tournament director and Bridgewater-Raritan High School athletic director John Maggio announced today.

I saw John a while back at a soccer game, and he told me some of the changes we had thrown around during the tournament last season were going to be put in for this year.

Today it became official.

The semifinals, which had been played on Wednesday night between the quarterfinals and final at North Branch Park, will now be played on Saturday at the higher-seeded team, moving the final back a week.

The championship game will continue to be played under the lights at North Branch Park.

This is a great move, and I applaud John for making it happen.

The biggest problem with the way the tournament was scheduled in the past was two-fold:

1 – The seeding meeting is too early. Depending on the season and how much rain we get, teams have come into the seeding meeting have played as few as only two or three games, making it nearly impossible for the coaches to properly seed the tournament, especially the newer coaches who don’t really have a feel for which teams are historically dominant in the county.

2 – With the semifinals being played Wednesday night, it means that the result of that game counts toward qualifying for the state tournament, which is that Friday. Also, with most teams playing conference games Tuesdays and Thursdays, teams advancing in the tournament have a disadvantage, including being up late playing on a school night (the later game usually doesn’t end until around 10pm).

It isn’t easy to fix both these problems, simply because of the time-frame the state allows for the softball season to be played, but it’s great to see one of them was corrected.

Opening day of the spring season cannot happen until April 1. And since the state tournament starts in the third week of May, it isn’t possible to extend the county tournament past the start of states.

Therefore the choice had to be made whether to start the tournament a week later – allowing for the seeding meeting to happen a week later – or to move the final back a week, correcting the problem of having the semis on Wednesday night.

Now, while we have to walk before we can run, perhaps the tournament committee can consider doing what they do in Union County and Middlesex County, where they play multiple games per week in the opening round.

Here is one proposal, off the top of my head, and I ask you, dear readers, to correct me if I’ve overlooked anything.

Move the seeding meeting back a week. Start the tournament that weekend, with a play-in game Friday and the preliminary round with the 9-16 seeds Saturday – as is done now.

Then, the following Wednesday afternoon, you have the surviving teams face the 5-8 seeds, setting up the quarterfinals the following Saturday on the day that you normally play the second round.

Then you have the semifinals the next Saturday (the day after the cutoff for states), and the championship game the Saturday night after that, ending the tournament before states begin.

The only problem I can see is that now, instead of having four teams playing in a Wednesday night semifinal, you have eight teams playing in Wednesday earlier-round games (of course, not having to play at night would be helpful toward the fatigue factor).

But, like I said, one thing at a time.



2009 SCT TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE:

WED, 4/15: Seeding meeting at Bridgewater High School, 7:30 p.m.
FRI, 4/17: Play-in game (No. 17 seed at No. 16 seed)
SAT, 4/18: First-round games @ 11 a.m. at higher seed
SAT, 4/25: Second-round game @ 11 a.m. at higher seed
SAT, 5/2: Quarterfinals @ 2:30 p.m. (SAT day) at higher seed
SAT, 5/9: Semifinals @ 11 a.m. at higher seed
SAT, 5/16: Final @ 7:30 p.m. at North Branch Park.