During a virtual meeting late last week, the MIAA’s Tournament Management Committee (TMC) voted to overturn the requirement that all fall sports be seeded with a MaxPreps power rating formula.
The TMC had originally settled on MaxPreps, a national website that catalogs high school sports, with the plan to seed all tournaments during the 2020-21 seasons.
But TMC members were concerned about the uncertainty surrounding the fall 2020 season as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Wellesley athletic director John Brown initially motioned to remove MaxPreps for the entire 2020-21 school year, but after that was defeated, a new motion by Westborough AD Johanna DiCarlo to focus initially on just the fall season was unanimously approved, 13-0.
The vote means that individual fall sports can continue to use their previous seeding criteria, whether that is straight winning percentage or some sort of formula as has been the case in years’ past.
The TMC will address next year’s winter and spring seasons at a later date, and also whether MaxPreps’ role in the statewide tournament beginning in fall 2021 will remain as originally planned.
In addition to the vote on MaxPreps, the TMC also approved alignment proposals for four sports — field hockey, basketball, soccer and girls volleyball — in conjunction with the statewide tournament set to begin in fall 2021.
The approved statewide tournament proposal included criteria for the number of divisions in a sport. The TMC approved proposals of four divisions for field hockey (204 teams), and five divisions for basketball (348 boys, 345 girls), soccer (332 boys, 326 girls) and girls’ volleyball (290).
However, two sports expected to draw the most scrutiny from the TMC — football and ice hockey — were also a big topic of conversation despite not being part of the official agenda. The current proposal for football is to remain at eight divisions, while boys hockey (195 teams) is asking for four divisions despite falling short of the normal criteria required.
The TMC has another meeting scheduled for June 29, during which football and hockey alignment proposals are expected to be discussed in further detail.