Re: Texas High School Championships....

Drew, Drew, Drew........

Texas had talked about doing a 3-day tourney BEFORE the switch to rally 
scoring.  I don't think one had anything to do with the other.

The (one) time I went to the state tourney, I remember sitting through 
some long warm-up sessions because one match ended earlier than 
anticipated.  The tourney should be set up so that one match starts 30 
mins. after the previous one ends.  Kinda like what they do in the NCAA 
BB tourney.  Again, I do not think the switch to rally scoring had 
anything to do with long pre-match warm-ups.

As for having teams sit for a day, a slight change in the format could 
easily solve that---have the smaller schools (1A, 2A & 3A) play their 
semi's on Thursday.  Six matches.  Have the 4A and 5A semis on Friday 
(early) and the smaller finals also on Friday.  5 matches, and the 
smaller schools can leave in 3 days.  4A & 5A finals about noon on 
Saturday.  Everybody's done and gone by around 4 PM.  NOW, if the UIL 
absolutely wants all finsls on Saturday, then you're going to always 
have the problem of teams staying over on Friday.

Just my $.02 worth.

Tom S.

drew Kalapach wrote:
> Well... I made it to the games on Friday.  I must say the ping pong
> scoring has the tournament ALL screwed up.  First I find out that they
> extended the tourney to 3 days from the traditional 2... So I missed
> Class 2A & 4A.... But now I see why.  We all heard they save time with
> these matches... Oh, yeah they did, IF they only go to 3 games which
> every match I watched today only went to 3 games.  Then we were
> treated to 1 hour of warm-ups.  Talk about making the tourney boring,
> they succeeded.  Their fear of a 5 game match left the gap.  So the
> end result is they have increased the length of the tourney with this
> stupid ping pong game.  I feel sorry for the families that have to
> drive clear across the state now, to play on Thursday... sit a day....
> spending extra cash for hotel and food till Saturday... Don't forget
> some of these people have to get an extra day off from work to see
> their kids play.
>
> It was funny... As I was leaving the tourney... A guy was walking out
> of the gym at the same time and he said to his wife next to him... "We
> drove 4 hours to see 45 minutes of volleyball."  I couldn't help
> myself saying "Hey... that's what you get with this ping pong game." 
> His wife just laughed.  You people that are in such a hurry to do
> stuff these days... Let's get to the game and get it over as fast as
> we can.  I got an idea, make the games to 5 points, that will get you
> home quickly.
>
> I know this is the way things have gone, but I don't have to like it.
>
> SIDEOUT TILL SUNDOWN, BABY!!!  That's for me.....