AURORA — The basketball committee meets on Thursday, and among proposals the group will discuss is an idea that would put all teams from the 4A and 5A classifications on the state tournament brackets.
The exact format would need to be ironed out, but the proposal the group will hear involves a 64-team bracket, with additional play-in games that may be necessary if either 4A or 5A has more teams than that.
The 5A boys are set to have 66 teams in 2016-17, and girls will have 64. 4A is projected to have 69 boys teams and 70 girls teams.
The number of play-in games in each tournament would depend on how many are needed to get to a 64-team field.
Under the new state tournament proposal, after the bracket is narrowed to 64 teams, seeds Nos. 33-64 would play in the first round. Those teams would advance to play seeds Nos. 1-32 in the second round based on a predetermined bracket. This means seeds Nos. 1-32 would have a first-round bye.
Currently, 5A’s boys and girls have a 48-team first with the top 16 seeds receiving a bye. The 4A boys and girls play a 32-team tournament, and no team gets a bye.
“Every team gets to control their own destiny and their play on the court will determine how far they will go,” said Bert Borgmann, the CHSAA assistant commissioner in charge of basketball. “Additionally, the feedback we’ve gotten from schools is that they’d like to finish the season against teams that are closer to their own ability.”
The proposed format would take roughly three-and-a-half weeks as compared to the current three week format.
Teams would be seeded according to the RPI (Ratings Percentage Index) formula, with league champions guaranteed a top-32 seed. Seeds Nos. 33-66 would also be determined by the RPI, with slight adjustments based on “reasonable geographic considerations.”
Other items on Thursday’s agenda at the basketball committee meeting:
Whether or not to keep the current consolation format in 3A. If the consolation format is removed, there is potential to move 3A to the same venue as the 4A and 5A Final 4 events. That proposal, too, will be discussed.
With 3A now having the most teams (72), they committee will discuss whether or not to expand that tournament from 32 to 48 teams.
The possibility of moving the 1A and 2A sites closer together, or simply having them at the same site.
A tweak to the 2A postseason format to account for RPI in the selection of the state tournament fields.
The host venues of each classification will be discussed in general, as well.
CHSAANow will have complete coverage of Thursday’s meeting.
The track and field committee meeting originally scheduled for Monday has been postponed to Feb. 8 because of an impending snowstorm which is expected to make travel difficult.
Forecasts vary, but a major snowstorm is expected to move into the metro area on Sunday and continue all day Monday.
In order to avoid any issues with the committee traveling on Monday, assistant commissioner Jenn Roberts-Uhlig postponed the meeting a week.
The committee meeting was scheduled for Monday at the CHSAA office, but it has been rescheduled to 9:30 a.m. on Feb. 8. The meeting remains at the CHSAA office.
AURORA — The lacrosse committees have recommended standard postseason qualification and seeding criteria for both the boys and girls sports, starting with the 2017 seasons.
The committees, which met on Tuesday, also realigned conferences — again, for 2017, not this coming spring season.
The recommendations will now head to the Legislative Council at its April meeting for final approval.
Currently, the girls and boys had different postseason qualifying procedures, though both allow league champions to automatically qualify. The girls use a selection and seeding committee that decides which teams make the 20-team field. The boys have a system whereby a committee votes on the field, with only certain teams eligible (the top 50 percent of each league, plus one team). The 16-team fields are then seeded by a committee.
Under the proposed format, both the boys and the girls would move toward what nearly every other sport has adopted to this point: League champions automatically qualify for the field, and then the rest is filled in based on the final standings in the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) of the regular season.
The seeding criteria is also standardized in the recommendation: RPI would be the primary consideration, with slight adjustments allowed due to geography or to avoid league opponents. That adjustment would likely only be a seed or two.
“There was no reason to not align all of lacrosse to look similar in the selection and the seeding,” said Harry Waterman, the CHSAA assistant commissioner in charge of lacrosse. “Both committees worked very well together to find common seeding that worked for everyone.”
The postseason fields would remain at 20 teams (girls) and 16 teams (5A and 4A boys).
The realignment was also done with any eye toward the postseason. Leagues were relatively balanced out in terms of the number of teams, and the committees tried to find some competitive balance, as well.
“They made an attempt to be sure there was competitive balance in every league while maintaining the balance in numbers,” Waterman said. “Now, this would also allow teams to go field a competitive non-league schedule if they so desire as they take the strength-of-schedule component of the RPI into consideration.”
Lacrosse teams play a 15-game regular season. The 5A boys leagues are comprised of seven or eight teams. In 4A, most are six-team leagues with one seven-team league. The girls have five eight-team leagues, one nine-team league, and four independents.
The football committee met on Thursday. (Ryan Casey/CHSAANow.com)
AURORA — It may have been the smoothest, and most quiet, football committee meeting in CHSAA history.
Normally a raucous affair more closely resembling the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday’s meeting felt more like a formality, as much of the groundwork had been laid over the course of a dozen or so meetings over the past year.
“This is the smoothest this has gone in 30 years,” said CHSAA commissioner Paul Angelico.
As committee chair Mike Krueger put it: “This has been a total team effort of global thinkers.”
The end result of Thursday’s meeting is a recommendation that each classification have a 16-team playoff bracket, 6-man through 5A.
“We wanted things to look more alike than different,” said CHSAA assistant commissioner Harry Waterman, who oversees football. “And having everyone with relatively equal teams per class, there was no need to have one of them at 32 or eight.”
The 15-person committee voted to unanimously approve all measures that came before them on Thursday. Included was a single alignment proposal for each class, as well as postseason and seeding criteria.
The alignment proposals were released by the CHSAA office last month, and can be found here. All recommendations need to be approved by the Legislative Council at its meeting in January.
Each classification would use a Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) formula to help determine its postseason field. In 5A, the leagues were waterfalled based upon each team’s two-year average in the RPI in order to balance the divisions. That recommendation came out of an August meeting of the football committee, but was formally voted upon and agreed to on Thursday.
With that change, 5A football would also use reduce its postseason field from 32 to 16 teams. And the regular season would return to 10 games.
“The main options on the table were staying with the status quo, or moving to a 16-team bracket,” said Eric Gustafson, the athletic director at Horizon who serves as a 5A rep on the committee. “There was some discussion about a 24-team bracket, but that didn’t last long because teams wouldn’t get the Week 10 games back anyway.
“With the RPI and the waterfall, and you throw in there that the Grand Junction schools weren’t in there any more, 5A had a pretty unique opportunity to have balance.”
Added Robbie Owens, the coach at Grand Junction who is the other 5A rep: “5A kind of had a perfect storm.”
In addition, the football committee named each of the seven conferences. Up to this point, they had simply been referred to as “Conference A,” “Conference B,” and so on. Each were named after 14ers: Mt. Elbert, Mt. Massive, Mt. Lincoln, Mt. Wilson, Mt. Evans, Mt. Antero, and Mt. Cameron.
The 4A alignment is also a waterfall, though it was done geographically in three regions: North, South and Metro.
For 6-man, it means the so-called crossover games are now playoff games, giving the classification a 16-team bracket. Teams would not be reseeded when the field gets to eight, as they have been in the past.
It marks a major shift in philosophy for the sport.
“This process started a year ago at this time,” Waterman said. “When we were there, we decided we wanted this process to look different. We wanted to follow more along the lines of what CLOC does. So we started with that framework, and we met a lot of times. We’ve met with league czars, we’ve brought individual classes to our offices, and conducted surveys.
“We’ve never had more involvement with schools throughout this process ever before,” Waterman added. “This was truly a shared decision-making model.”
As far as the postseason field and seeding goes, the committee recommended:
Conference champions automatically qualify for the field. If a conference champion is outside of the top 16 in the final RPI, that conference champion would still make the field.
If a conference champion is already within the top 16, that champion would be guaranteed a top-8 seed.
The remaining spots in each classification would be filled by the final RPI standings of the regular season.
The use of a seeding committee in each classification. One member of each conference would sit on the committee, but a coach would not be allowed to be a representative.
The seeding committee would use the following factors: Geography, RPI, common opponents and head-to-head games.
Conference opponents would not be paired in first-round games.
When seeding, all committees would use a process modeled after a procedure 8-man is already doing: All conference champions are placed on a board for consideration, and then determine a No. 1 overall seed. The No. 1 overall seed goes on the bracket. The No. 2 team from the same conference would then go up on a board along with the other conference champions, and the seeding committee would then determine the No. 2 overall seed. The next-highest finisher from the conference of the No. 2 seed would put on a board for consideration. This process would continue until all 16 teams are seeded.
Notes
The football committee discussed host sites for the 3A championship game, especially a concern that the current requirement for 2,500 capacity may not be big enough. There was discussion about whether or not to move back to a neutral site that would guarantee a bigger capacity. Ultimately, they decided to up the capacity requirement for a site to host a 3A championship game to 5,000 people.
The 2016 season will begin with practice on Aug. 15. Zero Week will be Aug. 25. That puts Week 1 on Sept. 1.
Championship dates next season: Nov. 19 (6-man), Nov. 26 (8-man, 1A, 2A), and Dec. 4 (3A, 4A, 5A).
AURORA — The baseball committee wants to move to RPI, and wants to do it in the 2016 season.
The committee on Tuesday forwarded a proposal that the sport move to the use of an RPI (Ratings Percentage Index) system for postseason qualification in all classes this spring. That recommendation will now move to the Legislative Council at its next meeting in January.
If approved there, the RPI system will replace the Wild Card points, which have come under fire over the course of the past two seasons.
“The committee felt like the number of issues that have been created by Wild Card points and the manipulation of the out-of-state records necessitated it,” said CHSAA assistant commissioner Bert Borgmann, who oversees baseball. “They also felt a desire to try and exhibit the RPI going forward, and so the committee decided it would push for a change immediately believing it was in the best interest of baseball.”
RPI is slated to be a staple of postseason qualification across all team sports beginning in 2016-17. But, if this movement is not derailed at Legislative Council, baseball would become the first to implement the system in Colorado.
The second major recommendation from the baseball committee was the decision to not count out-of-state opponents toward the RPI formula. Those out-of-state games would still count toward the games limit, however.
“There was a lot of discussion about that,” Borgmann said. “It felt like there were two options: to use the soccer and softball model [which slightly adjusts the factors for all out-of-state opponents across the board], or not use them at all.”
It was a 7-4 vote, and committee decided to recommend not counting them toward the RPI formula.
“Some of the other states finish before Colorado, some after,” Borgmann said. “They did not feel like they were playing on an even field with that.
“There was also concern last year about the accuracy of the out-of-state records,” he added. “Therefore, because of the uncertainty of all of the results and the many differences in which seasons end around the country, the committee decided to start with in-state results only (in the RPI).”
The baseball committee has recommended the following for the use of RPI:
In 1A, each of the four district champions would automatically qualify for the state tournament. The remaining four spots would be selected based on the RPI standings. The eight-team field would then be seeded according to the RPI. The seeding committee would seek to avoid first-round matchups of teams from the same district, if possible. The district format would remain the same.
In 2A, District 3 and District 5 would be combined to play together due to the reclassification of a number of teams. That leaves seven districts in the classification. Each district champion would automatically qualify for the regional tournament. The remaining nine spots would be filled based on the RPI standings. The 16-team field would be seeded by the RPI, with an attempt to avoid district matchups in the first round if possible.
In 3A, the top two teams from each district would qualify for the regional field. The remaining 20 spots would be determined by the RPI. However, if any of the three 3A teams playing in the 4A/3A Colorado 7 League win the league, or finish in second place outright, they would also automatically qualify. Thus, anywhere from 12-14 teams can gain automatic spots, with the remaining 18-20 being filled by the RPI. The 32-team regional field would be seeded by the RPI. The bottom eight seeds could be adjusted due to league matchups and/or geography.
In 4A, 10 league champions, including that of the 4A/5A Southwestern League, would automatically qualify for the postseason. The rest of the field would be determined via the RPI. The eight hosts teams would be decided by the league champions with the highest RPI. Then, teams Nos. 9-32 would be seeded by the RPI, with possible first-round adjustments due to league matchups and geography among the bottom eight seeds. If a 3A team wins the Colorado 7, there would be no automatic qualifier from that league in 4A.
In 5A, the eight league champions would automatically qualify for the postseason. The remaining teams to fill the 32-team field would come from the RPI. However, there is no guarantee of a regional host as league champion. Instead, teams Nos. 1-8 in the RPI would host regionals. Teams Nos. 9-32 would be seeded by the RPI with a committee that seeks to avoid first-round league matchups. Geography would not be a consideration.
In 3A, 4A and 5A, the use of a preset bracket at the state tournament would continue.
AURORA — With all team sports set to move to the use of RPI in 2016-17, each individual sport committee is getting its shot at using the new formula to determine postseason qualification.
Within the last month, the softball, soccer and volleyball committees have made their recommendations for postseason qualification and seeding for 2016-17. Those recommendations, which all rely heavily on the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) formula, will be forwarded onto the Legislative Council for a vote in January.
Here’s what each committee decided:
Softball:
The committee recommended that automatic qualifiers be determined based on the size of the league they come from. A league with six or more teams would have two qualifiers, while a league with five or fewer would have one qualifier.
Under this recommendation, the 5A regional field would be comprised of 14 automatic qualifiers, and 18 via the RPI. In 4A, that would be 16 automatic qualifiers, and 16 via the RPI.
In addition to the RPI changes, the committee recommended that the 3A softball regional expand from 18 teams to 24. The format would increase to eight sites with three teams per site, and two advancing to the state tournament. This would also expand the state field from 12 to 16. Games would follow the same schedule as 4A and 5A, with one half of the bracket playing at 10 a.m., and the second half at 12:30 p.m.
With the expansion, the 3A field would get five automatic qualifiers from district champions, five more from runner-up teams, and the remaining 14 via the final RPI standings of the regular season. However, the runner-up in District 4 would only qualify automatically if the district is comprised of six or more teams during the regular season. If that runner-up does not qualify automatically, a 15th team would qualify via the RPI.
Automatic qualifiers can bump a team out of the top 32 (or 24, depending on the classification).
A 4A team participating in a 5A league during the regular season can receive the automatic qualifier of their league if they finish in the top 30 percent plus one of the teams listed in the league. Additionally, they can qualify via the RPI.
A 3A team playing in a 4A league during the regular season can qualify via the RPI only.
Regular season champions of the 3A districts will host regionals, and get a guaranteed top-12 seed. There will be a committee to seed the rest of the teams.
For seeding of the 4A and 5A regionals, a committee will primarily use the RPI standings, but also consider geography and try to avoid first-round matchups of league opponents.
The state brackets, all regional champions would get a top-8 seed. The remaining eight teams in each class will be seeded by a committee.
(Kai Casey/CHSAANow.com)
Soccer:
Like softball, the number of automatic qualifiers per league would depend on the size of that league. Leagues with seven or more teams would receive two qualifiers, and those with six or less would get one.
With that recommendation, the breakdown is as follows for boys soccer: 3A has 17 automatic qualifiers, 15 via the RPI; 4A has 15 automatics, 17 via the RPI; and 5A has 14 automatics, 18 via the RPI.
In girls, the 5A and 4A breakdowns are the same as the boys, while the 24-team 3A tournament has 11 automatic qualifiers, and 13 via the RPI; and the 12-team 2A tournament has six automatics and six via the RPI.
For 3A-5A boys soccer, and 4A/5A girls soccer, which are all 32-team fields, the top 16 teams will be seeded according to the final RPI standings of the regular season. The teams seeded 17-32 can be moved up or down one seed based on geography, and to avoid league opponents in the first round.
In 3A girls soccer, teams 1-12 will be set by the RPI standings, and seeds 13-24 can be changed one spot due to geography or league opponents.
In 2A girls soccer, the top four seeds will be set by the RPI, with the ability to move 5-12 because of geography or regional opponents.
Teams playing up a classification during the regular season can earn the automatic qualifier of that league by winning it outright, or qualify via the RPI.
A team playing down a classification during the regular season cannot earn the league’s automatic qualifier. They can only qualify via the RPI.
Volleyball:
The volleyball committee essentially swapped the MaxPreps rankings for the RPI system.
3A, 4A and 5A volleyball will use the final RPI rankings of the regular season to select and seed the 36 teams into regionals. Teams will only be moved if there are regions with teams from the same league, and will also adjust teams based on geography.
The 1A and 2A volleyball districts will run the same district and regional tournaments as they have been. Then will then use the RPI rankings after regionals to including wild card teams.
AURORA — The volleyball and baseball committee meetings scheduled for Tuesday have both been postponed to December because of an impending snowstorm which is expected to make travel difficult on Monday and Tuesday.
The volleyball committee will now meet on Dec. 3 at the CHSAA office. Baseball’s committee will meet Dec. 8, also at the CHSAA office.
Both sports committees will discuss their future use of the RPI, with baseball expected to vote on a recommendation that the sport move to RPI for the upcoming spring season.
The snowstorm has the northeastern and central parts of the state, including Aurora, under a blizzard warning, and heavy snow is expected in the mountains.
The National Weather Service warned early Monday morning that “travel will become dangerous in most areas by late this evening … and remain so through sometime on Tuesday.”
On Tuesday, the Service is projecting anywhere from three to 20 inches, depending on the region of the state.
AURORA — History was made Tuesday at the Classification and League Organization Committee meeting. Three times.
For the first time in the history of the Colorado High School Activities Association, schools were allowed to be reclassified as opposed to electing to play down. The CHSAA bylaws were amended in January to allow schools to be reclassified based on a criteria that has more to do than just competitiveness within their current classification.
“That’s the first step in the direction we have to go to keep competitive balance among schools so that they aren’t losing programs due to lack of interest,” CHSAA commissioner Paul Angelico said. “We have to do stuff that keeps kids having some degree of success so that they will want to continue to play the sports they’re playing.”
After the new classification enrollment numbers were voted on, the issue reclassification took center stage as Greeley Central and Montezuma-Cortez looked for reclassification in all sports while Estes Park sought it only for football.
Schools that are reclassified are eligible for postseason play while schools who play down in classification are not.
Greeley Central athletic director Rick Schmitz was the first to present his case. He laid out the socio-economic status of his student body as well as the approximate number of students who are on free and reduced lunch. The fact that the Wildcats have not been overly competitive in team sports also came into play as he made his case.
When pressed about how the Northern League felt about the Wildcats remaining in Class 4A, Niwot athletic director Chase McBride stood up on behalf of the league and said they would continue to welcome Greeley Central with open arms.
“It was a league-motivated decision,” McBride said. “They’ve been a good league member to us and we would like to keep our ties to them as they are.”
In the end, the committee voted to allow the reclassification of Greeley Central marking the first time in state history that a school has been reclassified.
“For our programs, it’s huge,” Schmitz said. “We were concerned about being classified 5A in the team sports. I feel that we met the (reclassification) criteria that they were looking for. And in the future, for other schools who fall in the same situation that we do, I think it can make a huge impact.”
The committee also approved the total reclassification of Montezuma-Cortez, who would’ve classified at 4A under the new enrollment numbers. Citing the socio-economic make-up of the school as well as other factors such as the burden of what it would do to their traveling expenses, athletic director Stacey Hall successfully petitioned CLOC to reclassify the Panthers in all sports.
The committee had earlier granted Estes Park a reclassification in football, keeping them at 1A where they had been in the previous cycle.
The reclassification process is unlike anything the Association has done and is using it as a means to keep schools competitiveness intact. When CLOC first began going down this road, it knew there would be challenges, but overall the committee was pleased with Tuesday’s results.
“When we started this process a year ago, we knew there were going to be some hurdles but we tried to provide as much information as we could from the get go,” said Randy Holmen, the principal at Holly High School who chairs CLOC. “When it got to today we were prepared and we felt like the committee was prepared to answer those questions and to tackle any situations that came up.”
Angelico stressed that the purpose of reclassification was not to simply drop down if a school couldn’t remain competitive in certain sports. He’s confident that CLOC has a system in place that will prevent schools from taking advantage of the system.
“That’s always a concern,” Angelico said. “We operate, though, on a system of trust and integrity. I think as long as we continue to stress the corner stone of how this works and we have a committee that keeps really high standards about what they’ll accept, then I won’t have those concerns.”
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Notables
CLOC approved probationary membership for two new schools: Denver Academy of the Torah (Denver) and Prospect Ridge Academy (Brighton). If approved by the Legislative Council, it would bring CHSAA’s membership to 354 schools.
Abraham Lincoln, Arvada, Cripple Creek-Victor and Del Norte all successfully requested to play down in football.
AURORA — A group of basketball minds from Class 2A met at the CHSAA office on Tuesday, and ultimately recommended a change to the way the classification handles its district tournaments.
The group, and ad-hoc committee made up of at least one representative from each of the eight 2A districts, wants the district brackets to rely heavily on the use of the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) formula, which will be implemented in a widespread fashion across all teams sports beginning with the 2016-17 season.
The full recommendation for district play in 2A boys and girls basketball is as follows, according to Bert Borgmann, CHSAA’s assistant commissioner in charge of basketball:
The structure would remain relatively the same — that is, eight districts narrowing to a 32-team regional bracket.
Districts would crossover and play one another for two seasons during a two-year cycle. Currently, the format rotates on a seasonal basis.
The district host would rotate season-to-season, allowing each district to host the tournament once during the two-year cycle.
The basketball committee would set the district crossover pairings, and use geography as a factor. (Schools will continue to determine their placement in an individual district.)
Four teams would qualify out of each district tournament: The champion, the runner-up, and the next two highest-ranked teams based upon their standing in the RPI formula.
The basketball committee would set the seeding criteria for the 32-team regional bracket. Eight teams would continue to advance to the state tournament.
The basketball committee would also set the seeding criteria for the state tournament qualifiers once they are determined.
These changes would begin in 2016-17.
“The goal was to try and get some consistency with what the classification wanted to do and what they could recommend to the basketball committee,” Borgmann said.
The proposed changes would need to be approved by the basketball committee, which next meets on Feb. 4, 2016. They would then need to be approved by the Legislative Council next April.
During Tuesday’s meeting, each district had one voting member.
In attendance were: Cole Larson, Sanford, District 1; Kevin Jones, Center, District 1; Bryan Dermer, Merino, District 2; Rocky Cundiff, Ignacio, District 3; Jimmie Langford, Dolores, District 3; Greg Swiatkowski, Burlington, District 4; Dirk Pederson, Limon, District 4; Tim Esgar, Paonia, District 5; Carl Lindauer, Las Animas, District 6; Tammy Ridennoure, Rocky Ford, District 6; Kathleen Leiding, Lyons, District 7; Harley Lowe, Dayspring Christian, District 7; and Don Steiner, Evangelical Christian, District 8.
