Please let me run things

As promised...The ICSTS Rant!!

The ICSTS is at it again. I know, I should find something else to rant about, but the ICSTS gives me so much material. We got the brackets and schedule for the state tournament, and it is ridiculous.

The one thing they got right: Faith is seeded first and we are seeded second. And that is all they got right. First of all, let's start with how they treat the top seeds. After a couple of play-in games at 5:30, which will reduce the field to sixteen teams, the next round begins. There are two of the eight games of this round this Friday night. Guess what two teams play? You are getting good at this. That is correct, us and Faith. It's not a problem for Faith, it's at their place. But for us, we get to travel to Lafayette on Friday, play a very poor team at 6:45 and then go home (at least 1hr 35min away) and travel back to Lafayette again for a a 5:10 game. And this game we have to travel all this way for? Probably near the weakest team we've played all year.

The schedule is also brutal for the next weekend. The semifinals take place on Friday night, and the final isn't until late on Saturday. So, because we aren't going to sit around Lafayette all day waiting to play, we get to make four round trips to Lafayatte over two weekends (contingent on the girls winning). Coach tried to get them to change this ridiculous schedule, but they won't. They all have teams playing in the soccer tournament that's going on the second weekend, but why the volleyball teams have to suffer for this, I have no idea. We suspect there is still the misplaced concern of prior years, about the poor girls getting over tired due to too many games in too short of a time. Please.

Now for the thing that really bothers me. (You thought I was bothered already? I'm just getting started.) The seeding. I was excited when I heard that the teams were going to be seeded at the end of September, based on how the teams were doing to that point. Well, by that time we played many of the top teams in the ICSTS, and it was pretty obvious to us how the teams should slot: Faith first, us second, probably Heritage third, Goshen fourth, and Clinton fifth. This based on our narrow loss to Faith at their place, our defeats of Goshen, Clinton, and Heritage (twice), as well as some information on the play between the other teams. I don't know what Heritage did against any of these other teams, but they came the closest to beating us, so I would put them right behind us. The rest of the teams in the state I believed to be below this group, but I wasn't sure. Anyway, the seeding came out. Faith first, us second - so far so good. Clinton was third. Ok, a little head-scratching here. Clinton had split with Goshen, but had lost to Goshen in their most recent game. Advantage, Goshen. So Goshen should have been above Clinton. And having played Clinton, Goshen and Heritage, I think Heritage should have higher than both. So who is seeded fourth? Why, it's Horizon! Horizon, coached by the guy heading up the seeding. Well, I couldn't say for sure, but from looking at the scores of Horizon against teams that had played other teams that had played us, I didn't think this was right. Anyway, moving down the list, Lighthouse is seeded fifth. I did a little checking and strangely, Lighthouse had defeated Horizon this season. Twice. But they were seeded lower than Horizon. This is getting more and more suspicious. Continuing on, Goshen is seeded sixth and Heritage seventh. Which means Calumet, seeded second, would likely play Heritage in the quarterfinals, and the winner of Goshen and Clinton in the semis, just to get to Faith in the finals.

As I said, I couldn't speak authoritatively about the level of play of the downstate teams, namely Horizon and Lighthouse. But, then checking some schedules, I saw that Horizon was playing Covenant in Demotte on October 3. I just had to go, so I did. Kelsey and I made the 50 minute trip down there to watch Horizon take on a team that we beat 25-12, 25-10, 25-9. It didn't take long to have my suspicions confirmed. As I have mentioned, it's easy to see if a team can play offense in warmups, not so easy to see if they play defense. I watch Horizon warm up. They didn't have much offense. Ok, they probably have good defense. Then the game started. As I say, Horizon's offense wasn't much. Which was nice for their defense, because they didn't have to be alone in their badness. Covenant beat them in three straight games. From my observation, Horizon does not deserve to be even mentioned in the same sentence as the top five teams in the state, mentioned above.

One strange thing: Coach Carr is getting an indication that the brackets might be flip-flopped before the semis, which would mean we would play the Horizon/Lighthouse winner instead of the Goshen/Clinton winner. Which would be more fair for us, but why in the world wouldn't the seeding reflect this? I just don't get it, other that strongly suspecting the Horizon people made sure their team had the easiest possible route into the final four, and then either: 1) feeling guilty about the easy route Faith had to the finals, or 2) wanting to give Horizon an "easier" semifinal to give them a better chance to make it to the finals.

It's easy to criticize, not so easy to come up with solutions, so here are my solutions: First, I would have done more research on and weighted more heavily head-to-head play, or not having that, measured the strength of schedule a little better. I daresay I might be the only person that saw Faith, Heritage, Clinton, Goshen, Calumet and Horizon play this season, so my seeding comes from more knowledge than most. My seeding would be 1)Faith, 2)Calumet, 3)Heritage, 4)Goshen, 5)Clinton, 6)Lighthouse, 7)Horizon, 8)whoever - at this point, it's not relevant. But if it were up to me, I would go out and take a look a some of the other teams - I would have traveled out to the Trinity tournament, for example, where several of the middling teams in the ICSTS play. Another thing I might do is split the group into two divisions, based on level of play. This would solve a couple of problems. The best teams wouldn't have to go through the motions of winning the early rounds to get to the other good teams, and no one would have to deal with the death march of games on four days over two weekends.

Let's discuss the schedule. At both our tournament and the Dayspring (Quentin Road) the entire bracket of twenty-four and twenty teams, respectively, takes place in one day. Why can't the ICSTS compress this tournament, if not into one day, into two days? The answer is they can. I would at least eliminate the Friday night games and do everything on two consecutive Saturdays.

See? I can fix all the problems of this tournament. Now, if someone will just ask me to do it.