IHSAA announces new Volleyball, Basketball, Softball and Baseball Sectional Tournament Alignments for 2008-2011 A USA-365.com Special Report by Mark Smith (03-27-2007)

IHSAA Sectional pairings -   2008-2011

4A Sectional 1  (7 teams)
East Chicago, Gary West Side, Morton, Highland, Munster LAKE CENTRAL and LOWELL
4A Sectional 2  (8 teams)
Chesterton, LaPorte, Hobart, Portage, Valparaiso, Michigan City, MERRILLVILLE and CROWN POINT
4A Sectional 3  (6 teams)
Mishawaka, Penn, Adams, Clay, Washington and Riley
4A Sectional 4 (6 teams)
Elkhart Central, Elkhart Memorial, Goshen, Northridge, Warsaw and Concord
4A Sectional 5  (5 teams)
Carroll, Northrup, Snider, DeKalb and East Noble
4A Sectional 6  (6 teams)
Fort Wayne North, Fort Wayne South, Huntington North, Jay County, Homestead and Marion
4A Sectional 7  (7 teams)
Kokomo, Logansport, McCutcheon, Jefferson and (West Lafayette( Harrison
4A Sectional 8  (8 teams)
Connersville, Greenfield, New Castle, Richmond, Anderson, Anderson-Highland, Pendleton Heights and Muncie Central


3A Sectional 17  (6 teams)
Roosevelt, Lew Wallace , Wirt, Hammond, Gavit and Clark.
3A Sectional 18  (6 teams)
Rensselaer, Knox, Kankakee Valley, Calumet, Griffith and ANDREAN.
3A Sectional 19  (6 teams)
John Glenn, Marian, New Prairie, Culver Academy, Plymouth, Rochester and St. Joseph’s
3A Sectional 20  (7 teams)
Frankfort, Northwestern, Western, West Lafayette,  Benton Central and Twin Lakes.

2A Sectional 33  (5 teams)
Bishop Noll, Lake Station, River Forest, Wheeler and HANOVER CENTRAL
2A Sectional 34  (6 teams)
North Judson, North Newton, Winamac, Culver, HEBRON and BOONE GROVE
2A Sectional 35  (5 teams)
Bremen, Fairfield, LaVille, Westview and Jimtown
2A Sectional 36  (6 teams)
Central Noble, Churubusco, Eastside, Freemont, Garrett and Prairie Heights


1A Sectional 33  (7 teams)
Whiting, Kouts, LaCrosse, Morgan Township, Washington Township, Campagna Academy (joins IHSAA in fall of 2007) and Bowman Leadership Academy (joins in fall of 2008)
1A Sectional 50  (6 teams)
Argos, Marquette, Oregon-Davis, Triton, Westville and South Central
1A Sectional 51  (8 teams)
Bethany Christian, Elkhart Christian, Blackhawk Christian, Canterbury, Hamilton, Howe Military, Keystone and Lakewood Park Christian
1A Sectional 52  (6 teams)
Caston, North White, Pioneer, South Newton, Tri-County and West Central

INDIANAPOLIS (03-27-2007) - The new IHSAA pairings are for four sports, baseball, boys and girls basketball, softball and volleyball.  With such drastic changes in the pairings, let's see who did well and who won't be happy.

Big winners...

ANDREAN
The 59ers should be favored over Calumet, Griffith, Kankakee Valley, Rensselaer and Knox in every sport except baseball.  The Niners won't miss Gary Roosevelt in basketball either.  The only problem in the new 3A Sectional 18 is travel.  Eventually KV and Knox will want to host basketball sectionals (they have very big gyms) and Knox is an hour from Andrean.

BOONE GROVE
It will be much easier for Boone to defeat North Judson and Winamac in basketball and baseball than it will Wheeler and Bishop Noll.  Boone also regains arch-rival Hebron as a sectional foe instead of Wheeler, a much bigger rival.  Travel is a problem here, too.  North Judson is a perennial sectional host and Judson is 30 miles from Boone.  But get Boone away from Noll and Wheeler in basketball and you may need another trophy case for sectional titles.

HANOVER CENTRAL
Hanover should be happy with this change.  HC remains in a five-team sectional, which means they will get a quarterfinal bye more often than not.  New 2A school River Forest replaces Boone Grove, a team that has defeated HC 17 times in a row in basketball.  In softball and baseball, the absence of Boone Grove from the sectional means good times are ahead.  HC is already the largest school in this sectional and the community is growing faster than the national debt.

Kankakee Valley
It's happy days here.  KV loses Roosevelt as a basketball sectional foe and picks up Jasper County arch-rival Rensselaer, a much smaller school.  KV also won't travel as far when Rensselaer hosts.  The future is scary though.  KV isn't that far from being a 4A school and with a quiet, attractive community, they will probably get there in the next 10 years.

Big losers...

HOBART
In the old 4A Sectional 2, Hobart could get a first round bye.  Now with eight teams, that's impossible.  All Sectional two teams have between 1800 and 3000 students except Hobart, which has about 1,100.  The Brickies will be major sectional underdogs in every sport here.  If you look at the eight teams in 4A Sectional two, this is the old Duneland Conference before Lake Central joined four years ago.  Hobart left that conference because they could not compete in anything except football.  How's that going to work for them here?

CROWN POINT and MERRILLVILLE
CP and Merrillville went from a six teams sectional with three other DAC schools to an eight-team sectional with five other DAC schools.  That means, if they win the sectional, they will play a DAC school at least 16 times.  Too much.  You do not want to be in the same volleyball sectional with perennial powers Michigan City and LaPorte.  And you truly do not want to be in the same baseball sectional as LaPorte, winner of eight baseball state titles.  4A Sectional two will now have six 2,000-kid schools, more than any sectional in the state.  If you want to go deep in the state tournament, I don't know where you go, but you've got to get out of here.

CROWN POINT - I did not think the sectional realignments for the next four years would affect Crown Point and Merrillville.  But it did.  In a surprise, the Indiana High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) created a rare Class 4A eight team sectional and put the Bulldogs and Pirates in the middle of it.

The IHSAA announced sectional pairings for all sports other than football for the next four seasons.  Crown Point and Merrillville, which were in the old six-team sectional two (CP, Merrillville, Chesterton, Valpo, Portage and Hobart), now have LaPorte and Michigan City added to that group.  What does an eight team sectional mean?

First of all it means no byes.  CP, Merrillville and everybody else will have to win three games to win the sectional.  It also means sectional play almost all week.  In basketball, for example, there will be four quarterfinal games split over two weeknights before the Friday semifinals and Saturday championship.  In baseball and softball, any rainouts in an eight team sectional create scheduling nightmares.

"I think that to host our sectional now, you are going to have to have lights," said CP athletic director Jerry Caravana of the new baseball and softball pairings.  "There's just four schools (Chesterton CP, Merrillville and LaPorte) with lights for baseball."

The biggest change will be that CP and Merrillville baseball now will have state superpower LaPorte as a sectional rival.  LaPorte has won at least 20 games for 37 years in a row.  Nobody honestly wants them in the sectional.

What isn't obvious is why 4A Sectional 2 grew to eight teams while 4A Sectional five stayed at five teams.  The problem may have been Warsaw, which isn't really near any other 4A schools.  When Warsaw came north to Sectional four that gave the IHSAA a chance to put Penn and Mishawaka back in the South Bend area where they belong.  But why move BOTH Michigan City and LaPorte to sectional two.  Why not create two seven-team sectionals?

"This doesn't make any sense," said CP baseball coach Steve Strayer.  "I don't know why LaPorte is in our sectional and not in South Bend."

The IHSAA put only five teams in sectional five and eight in sectional two.  Warsaw seemed to be the swing team.  Had they moved east to sectional five, other teams would have slid east and LaPorte and Michigan City would not be in sectional two.  But the IHSAA apparently decided Warsaw was too far from Fort Wayne.

"Warsaw's the same distance from Fort Wayne as LaPorte is from Crown Point," said Strayer.  "I don't understand what their reasoning was."

The new pairings won't affect softball much because the two schools added to the sectional were Michigan City and LaPorte, who are not softball powers.  But the addition of LaPorte, winner of eight state titles, to the baseball sectional is a major roadblock.  It also means that who ever wins will have to burn three pitchers just to win the sectional.

One fan-friendly positive occurred in 3A sectional 17 where three Gary schools, Wirt, Lew Wallace and Roosevelt were matched against three Hammond schools, Clark, Gavit and Hammond high.  That will create a city-vs.-city playoff, which should be fun.  It may not be permanent fun as there is talk of consolidation in both cities.  This may be the only four years of the Hammond-Gary Sectional.

As expected, Boone Grove and Hebron moved south for sectional play from Sectional 33 to sectional 34.  They will now compete with Winamac, North Judson, North Newton and Culver.  That's a boost for Boone, which always would have had basketball and baseball struggles with Bishop Noll.

The IHSAA appears to have tried to keep local areas together, which is why Penn and Mishawaka are grouped with South Bend.  But, in doing that, they created 'yellow brick road' five team sectionals for some and 'death march' eight-team, sectionals for others.  There are three, five-team Class 2A sectionals in the northern half of the state and none in the bottom.  The easy path to the state finals will be in the north in 2A for the next four years.

The toughest road?  Class 4A in the north which has two eight-team sectionals and Class 2A in the south which also has two eight-team groups and a half dozen private schools.

How can you avoid this?  You can't.  It is a product of the four class system.  In a two class system, all sectionals would be seven or eight teams and this problem would not exist.  As more schools come on line, this format will level off.  But we're talking 20-30 years.  For now, there will be large inequities in how hard it is to reach the state finals.  And the toughest road to Indianapolis, considering all sports, won't be some Mitch Daniels toll road, it will now be Class 4A, sectional 2.

SECTIONAL NOTES:  A question that may soon be asked is if 4A Sectional two wants the "satellite site" concept that Sectional one has used?  Because of the distance invoked in sectional one, quarterfinal games were held at home sites.  It blows up the sectional "feel" of the tournament, but it does draw larger crowds and saves on transportation costs on weeknights.  The way it stands now, Crown Point and Merrillville will have to travel 45 miles to LaPorte three times to win the sectional.

Looking ahead to 2012, Hanover Central will be moving to 3A (they are only 15 students short of 3A now), which will probably bring Boone Grove back to sectional 33.  But the unpredictable bracket in NW Indiana will be 3A.  Hanover figures to then join 3A sectional 17 with the Hammond and Gary schools, which will be a major problem for them in basketball.  But it will be a gold mine in baseball and softball.  In the long run, Clark and Hanover, which projects to have 1,000 students by 2011, may be big baseball rivals.  What's really scary is that there are housing projections where Hanover Central could be 4A in 10 years.  Lake Central will be at 3,000 students this fall and Hanover is the district immediately south.

If Highland loses 30 students in the next four years, they will join the Hammond and Gary schools in 3A as well.  On the dark side, Kankakee Valley is only 40 students short of being 4A and they do not have a program, with the possible exception of baseball, which could compete at the 4A level right now.  A 4A KV would also have to head south possibly to sectional seven with Harrison, Jefferson and McCutcheon.  Some areas of Lafayette are growing as fast as South Lake County.

There is serious doubt that Wirt, which has 750 students and a very old school building, will still be around in four years, but if they are, they could be 2A.  Gary schools may begin to lose students to the new 1A schools like Bowman Leadership Academy and Campagna Academy.  There is no way of knowing how big those two charter schools will be by 2011.  They are the most unpredictable aspect of the future in high school athletics.


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Revised: March 28, 2007 .