Do I favor a return to non-class high school basketball? Yes.
Do I think the state gummint needs to stick its fingers into this particular pie? No.
But for the IHSAA to sit there and whine that it doesn't make financial sense to get rid of class basketball just galls me. It may not save the IHSAA money, but it would sure make more sense for sectionals and regionals to be sectional and regional, rather then require teams and fans to travel halfway across the state to compete in the tournament:
[Sen. Jean] Leising, a graduate of now-consolidated Sunman High School in Ripley County, cited enthusiasm for basketball, decreased travel and opportunity for economic development as reasons for a change back to the old format."In the single-class tournament, sectionals were done locally," Leising said. "You were within a half-hour for the sectional and an hour for the regional. Now you have teams driving all over the place and family and close friends watching the games. Let's bring back that local competition."
Amen. But I still think the General Assembly has better things to do with its time...although I suppose any time spent on this will be time not spent on things that may adversely affect us in our daily lives. On balance, that may be a bonus.
Ugh, if you get the comment verification code wrong it deletes the comment!
Apropos nothing I just finished late last night a fictional book about the last State single class basketball tourney called Invincible, Indiana (a good read, too!).
Class basketball ruined the best basketball tournament in the United States. I hate class basketball. But the single class tourney ship has sailed. There is no going back. The small and parochial schools will never vote to change and the big schools do not care.
The IHSAA is a private organization. They should run the tourney as they see fit. The tourney format was not the Legislature's business in 1997, and it not their business today.
I need to fix that. The problem is that the preview takes you to a place on the same website that's accessed using a different domain, so the Recaptcha fails to initialize.
Oh and if you use the back button after it fails (instead of using the button that claims to take you back to your post), you should be able to get your comment text back.