ICSTS Follies

The fun continues.

The weekend in Lafayette began with Mr. Meyers, czar of the ICSTS, pointedly ignoring Coach Carr and our team when we arrived for the exercise in futility that the first game was, which set the tone for the whole weekend. Then, Coach Carr was greeted by a smiling Mrs. Meyers, who asked if we had our scorekeeper, as required from the higher seed. Yes, we had, she responded (me). Then she asked if we had line judges, also as required. No, said Coach. The smile disappeared. Why not? Coach Carr calmly explained that we were assured that we would not have to play on Friday night, so we had games scheduled for the night. Games that our JV had to play since now our varsity had to play here. So all our potential line judges were busy. Playing a game our varsity was supposed to play. Mrs. Meyers was not happy. She was quite cold to us the rest of the weekend.

So, Saturday we got there a little early, so after watching the Goshen-Clinton game for a while Coach Casey, Coach Carr and I wandered over to the other gym to see what we thought we would be the Horizon (4th seed) and Lighthouse (5th seed). As we walked in, we found out that Horizon had won two and the teams were in their fourth game. So apparently the other team had won one. We settled into our seats and took a look at Horizon's opponent. GCS was on their jerseys. GCS? Lighthouse? I took a look at the brackets and realized that the 12th seed had "upset" Lighthouse, the fifth seed. Who was the 12th seed? Why, it was Granger Christian.

Horizon played Granger to get to the semifinals.

Our JV team always plays Granger's varsity and regularly beats them. I mean, we don't even send our varsity to play Granger because it's too one-sided.

I will need a lot convincing that Mr. Meyers didn't arrange the seeding to get his below-average team into the semifinals. Deserving teams like Clinton and Heritage are done, while Horizon - Horizon who lost to Covenant in three straight after Covenant lost to Heritage in three straight - is still playing while Heritage's season is over. Horizon who needed four games to defeat Granger, is still playing while Clinton's seniors won't get to play high school volleyball again. I'm sorry but if Horizon played ten games against us, Faith, Heritage, Clinton or Goshen, they would lose ten times. It isn't right or fair.

What a lesson these girls are learning.

So now Faith gets to play the cupcake, guaranteeing their spot in the finals while we have to go through Heritage and Goshen to get there. What, we don't have to beat Clinton too? How did they let that happen?

One final thing: Faith gets to choose what semifinal time slot they want - either 6:10 or 8:45 EDT, because they are the top seeded team. So we don't even know what time we play on Friday yet. EDIT: We are playing at 6:10, 5:10 our time.

Apparently at least one coach is starting to see things as we do. However, we'll need a few more to change the way things are set up. Many coaches don't understand what's going on or don't care. But if this kind of thinly-veiled abuse of power continues, more teams are going to be burned. And then hopefully enough teams will say enough is enough.