When three Greater Cincinnati girls soccer teams got closer to the state championship game, their players, coaches and fans rushed to the Ohio High School Athletic Association website to mark down the date and times of when they would get a crack at their school's first-ever title in the sport.
With times that had been posted on ohsaa.org for a while, fans started making plans to be available for the games at Lower.com Field in Columbus.
Once they punched their tickets, Mount Notre Dame fans saw their Division I state championship game had been set for 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 12. Wyoming's Division II game was set for 4 p.m. and Division III Waynesville was set to play at 1 p.m.
Enter the OHSAA, who in stealing a line from famed college football analyst Lee Corso, hit these soccer fanbases with a "not-so-fast."
The association made an announcement Thursday that all game times would change.
As it turns out, Mount Notre Dame will no longer get a primetime slot. Instead, the team will square off with Cuyahoga Falls Walsh Jesuit at 4 p.m. Friday. Waynesville now will play Ottawa-Glandorf at 7 p.m. and Wyoming will face Chagrin Falls at 1 p.m.
So, what happened? The short answer is a number of things.
Scheduling changes from the OHSAA during tournament play aren't anything new. The agency that oversees Ohio's high school sports will often look at potential conflicts between two sports at the same school and put together plans to avoid double-booking two sports with the same start time if it can be avoided.
The scheduling conflict in question here involved more than one school, according to Tim Stried, OHSAA spokesman. Early in the week, even before a number of schools began to reach out, the OHSAA began looking at potential conflicts for New Albany, Wyoming and Walsh Jesuit.
Stried said game-time changes, even with short notice, are pretty common. They occur in multiple sports, he said, and in some cases even involve graduation conflicts.
"We do alter state tournament game times from time to time when we need to do that to help accommodate a school request," Stried told The Enquirer Thursday. "We've done it many times in the past, and we'll continue to do that."
To avoid this very conflict, the OHSAA often schedules girls state championship soccer games as "to be announced" or TBA. The reason why this year's slate included specific times is unclear, Stried said.
"I think we would rather have it set ahead of time so that people can plan and know," Stried said. "But I think a situation like this may certainly have us think about going back to listing them as TBA so people aren't planning and expecting it on a certain time because it could change."
While scheduling can't please everyone, Stried said the main focus for the OHSAA is working with administrators to accommodate multiple sports for the same schools.
"The first group that we're going to listen to is the school administration," he said. "So, if the school administration asks us to consider moving a game, obviously we're going to listen to the school administration first."
Mount Notre Dame athletic director Mark Schenkel said his school has been on both sides of the issue. Last week when he anticipated a conflict between field hockey and volleyball, he reached out to organizers to ask for a schedule change.
"It is frustrating, but I don't know if there's any other better way to do it," he said. "And it is a good thing, too, we've been on both ends. If they wouldn't have moved it for us last week, our fans couldn't have gone to both field hockey and volleyball."
Source link
