Bits and Pieces 46

 November 8, 2001

Now that the weather is getting colder, we look forward to shooting more games and events indoors. This is really why we show more volleyball matches on our program during tournament time. But it works out rather well now that four of the five Catholic Conference teams are in the semifinal round.

Archmere should be very thankful that their senior setter Hillary Seitz returned from an illness in time to help lead the Auks to a quarterfinal win against A.I. duPont. The Tigers were on a season-long roll with only one loss all year (to St. Marks in an early season tournament) and believed with reason that they could take out Archmere.
The Auks had a tough time against Hodgson in the first round and if the Silver Eagles didn’t have some trouble serving, they would have won that match despite being outsized all over the court. Amanda Rowe, a senior Auk, is a middle hitter who clearly likes to be the beneficiary of the quick offense that Head Coach Bill Strickland runs. She hits the ball as hard on those quicks as anyone in the state. I said anyone.

The Auks will take on St. Elizabeth for the right to advance to the championship round. The Vikes need their captain Clare Phillips to bring her "A" game on Thursday. Her "B" game won’t be enough, and she is that important a player on this team. Dana Olmstead, Kelley Bradley, and Ashley Carberry provide the power as Dana Cushing plays quarterback, but it’s Phillips who needs to show up and lead.

The St. Marks Spartans are a little shorter this year and by a big enough difference to give Ursuline, Archmere, and St. E’s all reason to think they have a shot at dethroning the three-time champs. The Raiders are throwing the 6’1" sophomore Kate Mills, the 5’11" freshman Sarah Williams, and the 6’0" senior Katie Stroh up against the 6’0" senior Spartan Liz Hubbard, and that could be enough to provide an upset on Thursday. But that’s provided that Ursuline’s rotation is taking advantage of the three spins that Rachel Pawlikowski is on the floor. Now Pawlikowski, a 5’8" junior, might hit the ball harder than anyone in the state, but she doesn’t play in the back row and therefore isn't on the floor at all times (as she probably should be.) The Raiders are clearly more solid with her on the floor (switching with Stroh in the middle) and if they are serving well when she enters, a couple good runs could be all that it takes for the Raiders to go to The Bob.
The Spartans are lead by Hubbard and juniors Ashley DenHoed and Angela Papili. DenHoed is an outside hitter and Papili is the Spartan setter. On last year’s team it was Leah DenHoed setting, and Kelly Papili hitting (just to add a little trivia into the mix.) Papili is a decent little defender and is an acrobatic setter (at least the time I was watching her play.) The 5’10" senior Lauren McNulty helps to keep teams honest on the front line (her older sister Erin played in the back row during her stay.)

The Flight B volleyball conference will be interesting in 2002. The A.I. duPont Tigers drop back down for next year where they will twice meet a team that will happily be defending their Conference Championship from this year, the Charter Force. Head coach Dave Stover is already looking forward to next year and the return of Alysson Sanders, and Lauren Douglas (amongst others). While he will need to develop one of his two freshman setters into a varsity level competitor to replace Ashley Sarnecky, don’t think for a moment that he won’t. This team came along way in the past couple years under his tutelage.

If the season were to end today, the four division one football teams that would be tournament bound would be Dover, Newark, Sussex Central, and William Penn with the seedings in that order (Dover has one more game played at this point.)
In division two, it would be Middletown, Hodgson, Delmar, and Concord. That’s if it ended today. Middletown and Concord still need to play each other, so the St. Elizabeth Vikings, in fifth place in estimated point standings right now, would be the team to take the Raiders spot if they were to lose to Middletown.

Losing to Middletown might not be automatic as Caravel nearly proved in a double-overtime loss.

The State Cross Country Championships are Saturday at Bellevue State Park in North Wilmington. The first race begins at 1 p.m. with the girl’s Division 1, then the D2 girl’s run at 1:40. The D1 boy’s start at 2:20 and the D2 boy’s start at 3 p.m.

There shouldn’t be any surprises, but we’ll be there to tape for the TV show again.

The only questions to be answered are who will be the D1 girl’s team champions and who will step up to win the boy’s individual title.  For the D1 girl’s the main race will be between Brandywine’s Jessica Leitsch and Caesar Rodney’s Jill Hajec. But don’t rule out a big run by Brandywine’s Jenn Kutney, or A.I. duPont’s Jackie Reifschneider.
By the way, there apparently were some technical difficulties in some sections of the cable system that temporarily blacked out our channel at the beginning of this week’s show, which was featuring the New Castle County Championships. But if you turned away, you did miss the balance of the show because it reappeared in those effected areas. The majority of homes did see the full show and we’re still trying to get an answer about what happened.

Hodgson coach Brian Feeley will do the Bellevue course analysis for the TV show.

Temptation Island is about the biggest waste of television network airtime. But I’m lured in every week it’s on including right this very moment.

Football games for this weekend are: Sussex Central vs Sussex Tech; Loyola, MD vs Caesar Rodney; Cape Henlopen vs Milford; Delmar vs Laurel; Indian River vs Woodbridge; Lake Forest vs Smyrna; Seaford vs Polytech; Friends vs Tower Hill; St. Andrews vs Tatnall; A.I. duPont vs William Penn; Brandywine vs Glasgow; Christiana vs McKean; Newark vs Delcastle; Charter vs Concord; Dickinson vs Hodgson; Howard vs Middletown; Mt. Pleasant vs Archmere; Caravel vs St. Elizabeth; Salesianum vs St. Marks.

Of these games the ones of most importance are the SC vs ST. The Ravens are just a point or two out of playoff contention and a win over the Golden Knights would place them in the top four D1 teams. Concord and Charter need to win the rest of their games to have a shot at a playoff berth, so a loss most likely means its early ice-fishing time. Archmere needs to win the rest of their games, as does St. Elizabeth, and Hodgson, so games with those teams involved are important for them as well. Bob Tattersall will look for his 200^th career win against the Hillers of Tower Hill. And of course anytime Salesianum and St. Marks gets together there are bragging rights up for grabs.

Everyone in the high school soccer community was again disappointed to see St. Marks and Salesianum in the same bracket for the state tournament. This again assures that the best game of the tournament will be in the semifinal round next Wednesday.

A cure for these continuing problems in soccer, volleyball, and other sports is difficult to find with the current conference structures. Teams involved in conference play- abiding by conference scheduling rules- sometimes get the shaft and sometimes get a benefit. For teams that aren’t involved in conference play, the same pros and cons apply.

One of the problems with allotting bonus points to teams that play teams with winning percentages of over 500 and 700 is that points get awarded to teams that aren’t so competitive. This is simply for the privilege of getting a butt whooping, but also the winning team basically gets two free points which is equally inadequate.

The St. Thomas More volleyball team had St. Marks on their schedule for the past two years. The two points they earn for losing miserably is equal to the same two points that St. Marks would earn for the win. The Ravens end up making the state tournament because the point totals become rather close and a more competitive team ends up getting pushed out. Something similar to this just happened to the Newark soccer team and they were left needing to buy tickets to go to the state tournament this year.

But I think I may actually have a cure for this problem. All of these formulas give either 2 or 3 points to teams for each win and bonuses for playing teams with the aforementioned winning percentages. I would propose that teams that get wins against teams with losing records at the end of the year only get 1 point for a win and the bonus point system can only go into effect if a team has a final winning percentage of over 40 percent. It makes for some last minute tricky math, but with the exception of perhaps needing to tinker with the 40 percent – to perhaps 33-45 or 50 – I think that would make up the deficiency.

It may also be time to take a look at realignment like even Major League Baseball has done. While realignment might mean that some old school rivalries might not happen as frequently, this is too small of a state for schools to avoid each for too long.

A possible realignment would go strictly upon geographical lines and it would mean that any school, and indeed every school, that wished to participate in a state tournament, becomes a part of a conference. There are 42 (or 43) schools that have varsity sports programs. Although not each school is represented in each sport, the conferences would still remain the same. The conferences would NOT be broken down into Divisions 1 and 2. There just aren’t enough schools in this state to warrant a Division system anyway.
So for kicks, lets break this down even further and even give names to the conferences.

The Almost Inner-City Conference
Ursuline
Padua
Salesianum
Howard
Charter
St. Elizabeth
Wilmington Friends

The New Penn Conference
Newark
St. Marks
Glasgow
Christiana
Delcastle
William Penn
New Castle Baptist

The Marshal Conference
Dickinson
A.I. duPont
Tower Hill
McKean
Wilmington Christian
Tatnall
Sanford

The Middle of the Road Conference
Middletown
Smyrna
Red Lion Christian
Caravel Academy
Hodgson Vo-Tech
St. Andrews

The Northern Alliance
Brandywine
Concord
Mt. Pleasant
Archmere Academy
Wilmington Christian

The Snarled Traffic on Race Day Conference
Caesar Rodney
Dover
Polytech
St. Thomas More
Woodbridge
Milford
Lake Forest

The Deep Southern or Slower Lower Conference
Sussex Central
Sussex Tech
Seaford
Cape Henlopen
Laurel
Delmar
Indian River

It would be understood that each conference winner receives an automatic berth to the state tournament regardless of how solid a conference is. Then figure at-large teams based on the newly proposed system and there shouldn’t be too much trouble with how teams get seeded. But this would also be provided that all teams had to play at least one game against a team in one of the other conferences on some sort of rotating basis. This would give good indications on a regular basis of how the competition is shaping and holding up in each conference.

It’s a thought anyway. It’s certainly better trying to come up with a plan than it is to consistently whine and moan about how the brackets shape up every year.

Marshal Manlove