Northwestern To End District Tournaments

Posted: March 30, 2013
By ROBERT NIEDZWIECKI

WINCHESTER — The Northwestern District will no longer have district tournaments and meets next year but the Bull Run District will continue to have district tournaments and meets next season, according to area actitivities coordinators.

Under the Virginia High School League’s new six-classification plan that will begin in the fall, the postseason will start with a new level of competition called conference competition.

Each of the six classifications will consist of two regions, four conferences in each region, and every school in the state will qualify for their conference tournament, no matter what their regular season record is.

Districts are still being kept in place to help with regular season scheduling. But because how a team fares within the district will no longer play a role in qualifying for the postseason, each of the state’s districts are being given the option of whether or not they wanted to continue holding district tournaments.

Sherando coordinator of student activities Jason Barbe said there’s no doubt there’s always something special about watching two local rivals duke it out in a district tournament game.

But one of the things that make district tournaments so intense is that in many instances, you’re playing for your season. Unless you were a district regular season champion, a loss often means packing your uniform away for good.

In addition to the lack of playoff advancement, in the Northwestern District’s eyes, there were other important factors to consider in eliminating tournaments.

For starters, an entire week usually needs to be set aside for a district tournament, which means one fewer week that teams have to schedule games. The Virginia High School will not be extending the season to accommodate district tournaments.

“[District tournaments] would have to be squeezed in to an already crowded schedule,” Barbe said. “There is no extra time built into the schedule for them.”

Barbe said tournaments won’t count against a team’s contest participation limit, but still, that creates scheduling issues. For example, in basketball, if you play the maximum 22 games before the district tournament, you risk putting too much stress on your team with one fewer week to play them in. If you decide to play fewer than 22 games so as not to overload your team, you risk not playing as many games as you’d like if you suffer an early exit from the district tournament.

Never mind what happens to the schedule with one fewer week to work with if you have bad weather.

“We have a hard enough time trying to squeeze games in without playing three, four games a week,” James Wood activities coordinator Craig Woshner said. “If you have bad weather, you kind of need that extra week at the end of the season for makeup dates and things like that.

“On the one hand, a lot of your best rivalries are in your district. But when you look at the pros and cons of it, it’s just not worthwhile to continue it anymore.”

As far as the Bull Run District, Clarke County athletic director Casey Childs said the district wanted to keep district tournaments and meets in place to give their athletes another championship to play for, and also to maintain their competitive relationships with rivals.

Next year’s Bull Run District will consist of Clarke County, Central, Madison County, Manassas Park, George Mason, William Monroe, Rappahannock County, Strasburg and Warren County. Of those eight other schools, Clarke County will only be in Conference 35 (of the Group 2A East Region) with Madison County, George Mason and Strasburg.

In order to do this, Childs said the Bull Run — which typically waits at least a week and a half to two weeks to start district play — will allow schools to start scheduling district games from the first game participation date of the season. Childs also said the Bull Run will just go ahead and cancel district tournaments and meets if weather becomes an issue, because there’s no advancement.

“We just wanted to give the kids something else to play for, and we want to do more than just the regular season for the rivalries we have,” Childs said.

Childs said the majority of coaches are on board with the plan, but at least with Eagles girls’ basketball coach Tim Lawrence, there seems to be a wait-and-see approach.

Lawrence said while he’s not against having district tournaments right now, he’s not necessarily for them either. He said it’s certainly possible that athletes will be fired up to play a district tournament that will be played for pride and bragging rights, but he won’t know for sure until his players are in the moment.

“If they know it doesn’t mean anything as far as advancement in the postseason, you don’t know how they’re going to respond,” Lawrence said.

Lawrence notes that district tournaments have already been diminished in basketball because of the divisional split in Group A and Group AA over the last six and five years, respectively.

It used to be a situation where only the top two teams in each district moved on to regional play, one of whom was the district regular season champion. But the eight-team Bull Run sent three boys and girls teams on to regionals this year, and for the Northwestern, the Region II tournament was almost like what next year’s all-in conference tournament will be — four of the five teams for boys and girls advanced to regionals.

Millbrook girls’ basketball coach Debby Sanders also said the diminished nature of the district tournament is a big part of why she’s fine with seeing their elimination.

She would actually rather not even play a round-robin district schedule, because she would rather play teams that are in Millbrook’s conference, because those will be the games that truly matter. For example, Millbrook’s games against Group 4A Conference 21 rivals James Wood and Sherando will certainly carry more weight than games against Skyline, which will be in Group 3A Conference 28.

“As far as local bragging rights, you can get that with the regular season games,” Sanders said. “I’m fine with not having tournaments.”

Coaches in individual sports such as wrestling and swimming said they’re OK with doing away with district meets, because they’ll still see their rivals in the regular season.

Handley is undergoing the biggest change, because it will be separated from James Wood, Millbrook and Sherando as a result of its placement in Conference 23.

Because there won’t be any advancement anyway, Handley wrestling coach David Scott said he’d much rather face his district rivals in a dual-type setting rather than in a long, drawn-out event.

“[A tournament’s] not beneficial, because it doesn’t mean anything,” Handley wrestling coach David Scott said. “We’re still wrestling James Wood, Millbrook, Sherando and Skyline in duals. Duals are important for wrestling. It’s tough for people to come out on Saturday and sit there all day, because it’s not fan conducive.”

For conference alignments next year, James Wood, Millbrook and Sherando will be grouped in Conference 21 of the Group 4A North Region along with Dominion, Heritage, Loudoun County, Park View and Woodgrove. Handley will be in Conference 23 of the 4A North with Charlottesville, Fluvanna, Louisa County, Amherst County and Harrisonburg. Clarke County will be in the Group 2A, East Region, Conference 35 with Madison County, George Mason, Strasburg, Stonewall Jackson, Luray and Page County.

Note: The VHSL announced on Thursday that next year’s state basketball semifinals will take place at supersites around the state and will not all take place at Virginia Commonwealth University, which is what the current situation is. They will be played March 7-8, with the finals to be held March 13-15 at the Siegel Center.

VHSL spokesman Mike McCall said with six classifications, the VHSL could no longer hold all of its semifinal and final games at VCU. There will no longer be state quarterfinal games next year (the top two teams in each region for each class will advance to the state semifinals), so the current supersite format for the state quarterfinals is being applied to the semifinals.

— Contact Robert Niedzwiecki at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Follow on Twitter @WinStarSports1