Response to Ernie Clark’s Article About Travel in H.S. Basketball

Ernie Clark’s excellent article today in the Bangor Daily News about High Schoiol Basketball Teams and their travel to get heal points to make the prelims and tournament was an excellent description that has plagued Maine High school Basketball ever since the inception of the Heal point System arrived in the early 60’s.

Prior to the heal point system there were just 3 classes, Small, Medium and Large. The teams back then qualified for the tournament by a playoff process. All teams qualified for these playoffs and they were done by regions of the state in Eastern and Western Maine.

Maybe it is time to take a look at that again. The problem  is that Heal Points have never been fair. They are only fair if teams play an identical schedule.

You could do it much like the NCAA D1 does it. Break each class into  4 regions. Play each team in your region 2 times and then seed the teams for a regional conference playoff by their conference region won lost records. Take the Playoff winner and runner up from each region to the tournament in Bangor or Augusta.

 Play local teams in different classes before you start your regional conference regular season play,. This would reduce travel, increase local rivalries and bring in better gates. Teams could schedule whoiever they wanted to for pre-conference games except teams in their conferences

In fact, during my senior year in high school Class S and M had regional playoffs. but the L schools were selected by the SPA basketball committee based on their seasons record..Teams were then seeded by their record and strength of schedule.

The biggest problem would be dividing East and West into 4 regions each.

It could be done. Maybe it would be something that the MPA should at least look at.